


Always, They Come Back

by guardian_of_idfic (letsgostealafandom)



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: (emotionally I mean), Abandonment Issues, And no none of this is written in advance because I am a terrible person, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, I do not plan on traumatizing anyone too much!, Idfic, Like the relationship itself is mostly angst and fluff, Like they are both just so messed up, Lonely Jack, M/M, Point is tags will be updated as I add chapters, Slow Burn, So do not worry my friends!, There is nothing dark about this relationship in this fic, Touch-Starved, hahaha, like seriously, lonely pitch, seriously, this is the slowest of burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2018-08-24 02:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 47,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8353618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letsgostealafandom/pseuds/guardian_of_idfic
Summary: Jack makes an ill-advised wish while supervising Pitch's nightmare creation, and the Blue Fairy grants it. With their powers swapped, who's going to create fun for the children during the day and nightmares at night? And, more importantly, can it be reversed?
Fifty years after they sentenced Pitch to an eternity locked underground with only his own Nightmares for company, the Guardians were finding not all was right with the world when there wasn't someone out there manufacturing fear. Their oh-so-clever plan was to take a withering Pitch on supervised tours around the world to provide just enough nightmares and fear to rekindle the hope and joy of the children.When Jack was on duty and wished to understand what was going on in Pitch's head, he never thought that wish would immediately be granted. As both Jack and Pitch struggled to control new powers, they had to cross the continent through rough terrains and otherworldly terrors to reach the Blue Fairy's home and ask for her to switch them back. When they got there, would they discover the kind and loving fairy of myth, or something far darker?





	1. In Which a Discovery is Made

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my first blackice fic, please be kind. You can find me on tumblr at [guardian-of-idfic.tumblr.com](http://guardian-of-idfic.tumblr.com/). I'm hoping to get new chapters out at least once a week, but you know what they say about hopes.
> 
> I hope everyone likes this! It's unbeta'd because I don't actually know anyone in this fandom, so any and all mistakes are mine alone. Happy reading!

Jack was idly skating on his pond, trailing his staff along beside him to make frost patterns on the ice, when he heard the sound of North's sleigh high up above. Manny was bright and full, resting at his peak in the dark sky, and when Jack looked up he saw the sleigh crossing in front of him. Jack's heart leapt for a moment, before settling back to its slow rhythm in his chest. North wasn't going to be visiting him, not this close to Christmas.

He firmly squashed the well of loneliness opening up in his gut and turned, skating backwards as he thickened the ice behind him. Jamie's youngest might still be able to see him and want to go ice skating this year. Maybe she'd bring a bunch of new kids from town and they'd be able to convince at least some of them that he was real. It was getting harder to find new believers these days.

As he was slowing to turn and skate across the center of the pond — the last thing he wanted was a repeat of the winter 20 years ago when it was only the kid's desperate belief in him that let him pull her out of the hole in the center of the pond — he was struck by how quiet it was suddenly. Like someone had come through and scared all the night animals away.

He doubted it, though. It was late at night (or early in the morning) on the 20th and all the good little boys and girls were asleep in their beds. North was preparing for his holiday, the other Guardians were doing their work — except for Bunny, who knew what he did at this time of year — and Jack was alone.

He paused and pressed at the ache in his chest.

When he was made a Guardian, he honestly thought that feeling was going to disappear. That he would have his new family and everything would be great. He hadn't realized that the only reason why they were all together was because North had called them to him. That while they were all friends, they didn't hang out all the time. And that when they did…

It wasn't that he wasn't welcome. He was always welcome. It was just… he got it, he really did; it was hard to remember that he wasn't the same flighty spirit they thought he was for centuries before Manny appointed him as a Guardian. It was hard to look past the way he had made their lives difficult before, once he knew they existed, so desperate for attention that he didn't care that it was all negative.

He got it, he did. And it was just easier to stay out of their way, to go back to how it always was. Sure, if they specifically invited him he'd go hang out, but that wasn't exactly a thing that happened a lot.

"Jack!"

The sudden booming voice from behind him had Jack jumping half a foot in the air and landing bad, ending with him sliding across the ice on his ass. A lone crow cawed and flew away from the whole mess.

"Ah, Jack, I didn't mean to frighten you," North said, striding out across the ice and offering Jack a hand up.

Jack took it and pulled himself to his feet, then quickly stepped back before North could crack his ribs with a hug. The heat from that brief touch had him longing to step forward and let himself be wrapped in a bear hug — the only type of hug North knew how to give — but he couldn't. It was like eating a morsel of food after a long period of hunger. It wouldn't do anything but make the hunger worse.

"What's up?" he asked, sending frost spiralling out from where his staff was touching the ice out of habit more than anything.

"Surely you are feeling it," North said, looking around the empty pond. "The children, they are starting to forget."

Jack flinched away from his words. It had been harder for him to get new believers lately, but he'd assumed that was just his lot in life. He'd never have a big holiday to attach himself to, or something as physical and momentous as losing a tooth. He'd assumed it wouldn't be many years — maybe fifty, maybe a hundred, but not many — until he lost his last believer and was truly alone again. It wasn't something he liked to think about a lot.

It had never occurred to him that the same thing might be happening to the other Guardians. If it was, if they were losing believers or not gaining new ones…

"Is this Pitch?" he asked, gripping his staff tightly and looking around like Pitch would just appear out of the trees.

"That is what we are thinking," North said, nodding. "Come, we must go see what evil plans he is making from his lair."

"Are we sure he's even still there?" Jack asked, scrambling to catch up to North as he strode away. Luckily the half foot of snow that he had to wade through once off the pond slowed him down, and Jack, nimble on top of the snow and not leaving a footprint behind, was able to fall into an easy pace beside him.

"No, that is a thing we also will be checking," North said. "But the enchantments keeping him contained should still be strong."

As they crossed through the thin stretch of woods and into a clearing, North's sleigh came into view, with Bunny lounging across the back, his feet up. Sandy was floating nearby and Toothiana hovering up front, some of her fairies scattered around her.

"Jack!" Tooth cried when she saw him, and flitted up in a burst of fluttering greens and blues to hug him before he could subtly move back.

He couldn't help the grin that spread across his face, or the surprised laugh, as he hugged her back. "Hey Tooth. Lookin' good ladies," he said to the fairies.

"We've missed you, Jack," Tooth said, letting go and moving back to hover in front of him.

"Uh, yeah," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. There was no way he could say that he didn't feel welcome, that he knew he was only fun in small doses and whenever he was visiting he knew he inevitably overstayed his welcome. "I've been busy, making sure everyone's having fun around the world."

"I knew you would be good Guardian," North said from behind him, clapping him on the back and making him stumble forward a few paces as Tooth zipped out of the way.

"Bunny," Jack said cautiously when he regained his balance. He and Bunny would never be real friends, but they had reached a truce over the years. Jack didn't fuck with Easter as much, and Bunny grudgingly tolerated Jack's presence. It wasn't what Jack had imagined when he accepted the Guardianship, but he would take it.

"Jack," Bunny said, just as cautious, and stood up. He hopped out of the sleigh, landing in the snow with a muffled thump and shivering as his feet made contact with the ground. "Bloody winter," he grumbled.

Jack sent a flurry of snow and wind his way, just because. If he wasn't allowed to be angry about Easter and the start of Spring in front of Bunny, Bunny wasn't allowed to complain about winter in front of him, either.

Bunny shot a glare his way, but North was already between them. "Now, now, we are guardians of children, not acting as children."

Jack couldn't resist sending a smirk around North's back to Bunny, but Bunny wasn't even paying attention to him, having turned to look in the direction of Pitch's lair.

"Sorry mate," Bunny said, and Jack wasn't sure if he was talking to him or to North. "We're all on edge."

"This is true," North said. "But there is no use dallying." He patted his swords on the hilts. "We shall go and crush the Nightmare King back into the ground where he belongs."

Pitch's lair wasn't far from Jack's pond, just over the stream that fed it and through the woods to the clearing that used to house a crumbling bed and a deep, dark hole. Now, there was nothing to make the place where the entrance to Pitch's lair had been than a circle where nothing would grow. The children called it a fairy ring. They didn't know how close they were.

The ground was still smooth and unbroken, and Jack looked around the clearing for another entrance. There wasn't any.

"How are we getting in?" he asked, fingering his staff nervously. He could feel the anxiety creeping up the base of his spine. The last time he'd seen Pitch, he'd broken his staff, and it was only luck and gut instinct that let Jack put it back together. As the staff snapped, it had felt like Pitch had broken an essential part of _Jack_ , like a rib or a spine. He didn't want to experience that again.

North pulled two snow globes out of a pocket in his coat, handing one to Bunny and holding the other out for Jack to inspect. The main cavern of Pitch's lair had been burned into his memory, the tarnished cages, the endless stairs, the shadows everywhere. Inside the globe was a perfect replica. He suppressed a shiver and turned to Bunny and Sandy, who were standing apart from him, North, and Tooth.

"Aren't you coming with us?" he asked.

"Nah," Bunny said. "We're the backup when it all goes wrong."

North chuckled. "But it might go right, Bunny, do not be such a pessimist."

He grinned and shook up the globe, a light dusting of white swirling and glittering around the crags and dark spaces of the lair. He threw it in front of them, and a portal opened. Jack tightened his grip on his staff, glanced back at Bunny and Sandy, and followed North and Tooth into the darkness.


	2. In Which Fear is King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has been so nice and I love each and every one of you, so here is a new chapter. ♥ 5eva.

The cavern was darker than Jack remembered, the shadows longer and thicker. The cages were gone from the ceiling, or maybe it was just too dark to see them that high up. A cool wind whispered across the back of Jack's neck, and Tooth hissed his name disapprovingly.

"It wasn't me!" he whispered back, indignant. He didn't control all the wind in the world, after all. Most the time, he didn't control any.

"Perhaps we should have brought some light," North said, looking around and frowning. Jack could see North and Tooth, could see the dim outline of stairs nearby, but everything else was cloaked in shadow. Were there already more shadows than when they'd arrived?

He jumped at a sudden flare of light. A tunnel in front of them, one he hadn't seen before, was slowly growing brighter as the torches in sconces on the walls lit themselves, one by one.

"That's less scary in the age of electricity, Pitch. Show yourself!" Jack shouted as a shiver went down his spine. It was a lie; it was not less scary.

The torches flickered, sending the shadows dancing, and the cold breeze seemed to hiss as it blew gently around them. Jack shouldn't have been affected by the breeze — it was just some wind — but as it ruffled his hair and a cold feeling of dread started building in his stomach.

Tooth and North didn't look much better off, although North was doing a much better job of hiding it. The tightness around his eyes gave him away. Jack flinched when Tooth gasped, whirling around and clapping a hand on the back of her neck.

"What?" Jack asked, nervousness settling in his stomach next to the dread.

"Icy fingers," Tooth said. "On my neck. Not the good kind of ice like yours, Jack." She shuddered all over, and then the look on her face hardened. "If Pitch won't come to us, we'll go to him."

"Pitch!" North tried. "Stop with your games and come out!"

They were met with nothing but bouncing echoes of North's voice, that seemed to go on far too long for the size of the space. After exchanging a look with the two of them, he forged forward toward the lit tunnel.

"If he wants us to go this way, we go this way, eh?" he said, his voice a loud whisper in the silence. "Maybe he is being stubborn and waiting for us to find him."

"Maybe," Jack muttered, as he followed, Tooth hovering by his side. He doubted it, and clutched his staff tighter. If Pitch wanted them to go this way, it was the last way they should have gone. There couldn't be anything good waiting at the end of that tunnel.

Just as North reached the top of the stairs, the first torch snuffed out suddenly, leaving the entrance shrouded in shadow and the smell of smoke in the air.

"Great," Jack said. "That's not a coincidence."

"Of course not," Tooth said. She flinched when they heard a skittering coming from the shadows at the edges of the tunnel and flew a little bit higher.

"Just a rat, I am sure," North said, but Jack didn't think he looked too sure. And Jack was definitely going to scream even if "just a rat" ran over his foot or something. He wasn't scared, per se, not yet, but he wasn't… not scared.

As they forged ahead, the torches went out just before they reached the edge of each pool of light, leaving them constantly shrouded in darkness. The breeze had never stopped blowing, and sometimes Jack could swear he heard a voice on it, whispering too low for him to hear. Sometimes he could almost make out a word, feeling it on the tip of his tongue.

They walked through a cold spot that made North and Tooth shiver. As they came out of it, they paused, letting Jack and the footsteps of the person following Jack, almost in sync with his own, catch up.

Wait. There was no one following Jack. Bunny and Sandy were up top, and Sandy didn't make sounds when he floated anyway. He whirled around, but it was too dark behind him to make out if there was someone back there. He walked backwards away from the deepest part of the darkness and let a surprised squeak escape when he walked into something soft and heavy. When he whirled back around, it was only North.

"This was maybe not a good idea," North said as the next torch guttered out.

"You think?"; Jack said, under his breath. This was a spectacularly bad idea, now that he was down here, and he didn't know why he'd agreed in the first place. Technically he hadn't agreed, he'd just followed North like a puppy, doing what he was told.

"No," Tooth said, firm and implacable. "No, we have to make sure Pitch is still here, and then find out what he's doing to the children."

"Yeah, but-" Jack started, but she talked over him.

"We defeated him once before, and that was when he had many believers. We can defeat him now if he's a threat again, without Bunny or Sandy's help. This was a good idea."

"Technically," Jack said, "Sandy defeated him."

Tooth shot him a glare, and Jack held up his hands, his staff resting in the crook of his elbow. "It was teamwork."

"Stop this arguing," North said, stepping between them. "Good idea, bad idea, we are here."

Jack bit back the words that wanted to come out, pointing out that North started it. He just continued walking down the tunnel, trying to ignore the footsteps that walked behind them. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see North and Tooth glancing backward, both of them frowning.

He dragged his staff across the wall, masking the sound of whispers that were just growing louder but no more distinguishable. A trail of frost was left in its wake, glinting faintly in the light from the next torch.

 _Jaaaaack_. The voice sighed across the wind, making Jack jump and spin in a circle, looking for the person who said it. But it was only Tooth behind him, and North to his side.

"Did you hear that?" he asked, and hated the tremble in his voice.

"Hear what?" Tooth asked, coming up to hover on his other side.

"Something just whispered my name," he said, feeling foolish. Not only was it just a whisper, whispers couldn't hurt him, but he knew it was just Pitch trying to wind them up. He knew that, so why was his hand starting to cramp from how hard he was gripping his staff?

Both Tooth and North looked concerned, but Jack couldn't help that. He didn't have any reassurances to give, and childishly wanted one of them to reassure him. Instead, he just sighed and started walking forward again.

The footsteps were still there.

By the time they reached the last torch, Jack was jumping at nothing even as he desperately tried to hear what the whispers on the wind were saying. He groaned out loud when he realized that the torch — which still hadn't gone out — was at a dead end. They had just walked this entire way for _nothing_ , and now they had to go back through a pitch black — he couldn't even bring himself to snicker at the pun, he was so wound up — tunnel and try again. It was starting to look like Pitch wasn't here at all.

A sudden scrape of footstep came from the shadows behind them, and Jack started and turned, staff at the ready. He couldn't see anyone there, but he could feel that they weren't alone any longer. He'd swear to it.

A voice suddenly hissed out of the shadows at the foot of the dead end's wall. "Who comes to disturb the Nightmare King?"

"You know it is us, Pitch," North said, his twin swords already out and waiting. "Come face us like a man."

"I am no man," the voice hissed, this time from right beside Tooth, judging by the way she flinched and pulled out a knife. She and North were back to back, as though they fought like this all the time. Only Jack was left with no one to guard his back. Still, he turned so they were behind him, hoping Pitch wouldn't just appear between them and stab him, or cut off his head, or whatever.

"I can taste your fear, little fairy," Pitch's voice continued from the opposite side of the tunnel. "And yours, old man." An undignified slurping sound came from the shadows and Jack almost threw up in disgust. "Delicious."

Frost was spreading out from where Jack stood, reacting to his fear, but he was still surprised when the voice was suddenly snarling directly in his ear.

"And you. You dare deface the lair of the Nightmare King?"

A giggle forced its way out of Jack's mouth, surprising him and the other two Guardians. "It's just frost. It melts," he said. It wasn't like it was spray paint or anything that Pitch was going to have to scrub off. And even if it was, he deserved it.

The voice made a sound of rage before it was suddenly completely silent around them. Dead silent. Jack couldn't even hear the others breathing, couldn't hear himself breathing. All the sound was being sucked up by _something_. No one would hear him if he screamed, and that, perhaps, was what frightened Jack most. Not the whispers or the footsteps or the skittering of small animals, but the idea that he was alone in this. That even if he shouted for help, North and Tooth wouldn't be able to hear him.

He glanced back toward them just in time to feel the sound pop back into the world and see Pitch melting out of the shadows, scythe made of nightmare sand in his hands.


	3. In Which Some Give Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not realize how fun writing Pitch be a drama queen is. Now that I know, I am so sorry for the chapters that are to come.

Pitch was pale and gaunt, far gaunter than Jack remembered. His skin was the pasty gray of a fresh corpse, not the darker gray of a long-dead body. He looked _sick_ , and Jack wondered if this was what happened when no one believed in you anymore. If you slowly faded to nothing.

Even as North demanded Pitch tell him what he was doing to the children, Pitch circled them, looming over Jack and Tooth like a hungry carnivore over its trapped prey.

"You fear so much," he said, his voice hungry. "All of you. Good old Nicholas, not so jolly anymore, not when you're so scared of disappointing the children." He bit off the word like it was a swear and sunk back into shadow, as North growled and lunged for him with his swords.

Pitch appeared before Tooth and spat out, "And Toothiana, darling Toothiana with all her little fairies. So cute and quirky and afraid that no one will ever take you seriously, not when you're the newest of the Guardians. Except that's not true anymore, is it? You're not the newest any longer and still, no one takes you seriously."

"That's not true," she said, but her voice wavered a little and Pitch smiled a sickly little smile.

"Delicious," he murmured, bending backward as she stabbed at him and disappearing like smoke before suddenly he was in front of Jack, his hand on Jack's face, holding his chin. Jack was horrified to feel himself leaning into the touch for a second before jerking back and stepping away until he was framed by North and Tooth.

"Little Jack," Pitch said, after hesitating for a millisecond and staring at jack with something in his eyes. Jack felt a spike of fear drive through his heart because he didn't want them to know. He didn't want North or Tooth to know how afraid he was all the time, how pathetic that fear was. He was shaking his head, even as Pitch continued, like he could refute everything Pitch was saying.

"Little Jack," Pitch repeated. "So afraid of being abandoned and left alone. Oh, I could live on the strength of your fear for centuries."

"Stop this, Pitch," North said, stepping forward, his swords at the ready. "We have come to find out what you are doing to the children and stop you, once again."

"The children?" Pitch said incredulously. "The _children_? What am I supposed to do to the children when I'm locked down here? Even my Nightmares have wasted away with nothing to feed on."

"But they had you," Jack said before he could stop himself, and Pitch sneered at him.

"One person can only sustain Nightmares for so long before their fear is burned out of them," he hissed, catching Jack's gaze and not letting it go. There was something dark and malevolent behind his words, a lurking promise of retribution.

"There will be no lying to us," North said before asking again, "What are you doing to the children?"

"What are you not understanding?" Pitch stopped his staring at Jack and focused his attention on North. "You have me caged in my own home, unable to leave or even access the mortal world. How, exactly, do you think I am doing anything to your precious children?"

North stepped forward again, putting himself almost toe to toe with Pitch. "You will tell us," he commanded. "Or we will have to be using less friendly methods."

Jack found himself hoping to Manny that Pitch would just admit to whatever his scheme was. That he would give up his plans and they wouldn't have to… do what North was threatening.

"You think you can force _me_?" Pitch asked, dark laughter bubbling out of him and filling the small space. "I am the Nightmare King. I have seen horrors you could never imagine, and brought them to the dreams of sleeping children. I ruled this world during the Dark Ages and one day I will rule again, and you think you can _force_ me to-"

Tooth flitted past North and stabbed Pitch in the shoulder, cutting him short.

Jack gasped with Pitch as she pulled out her dagger with a sick, wet sound. Pitch was left staring at his shoulder, as it slowly trickled a viscous black fluid. He looked shocked, but the shock was quickly morphing into anger as he looked back up at North and Tooth. His eyes didn't flick to Jack even once. It was like he wasn't even there.

"How dare you," Pitch said, and his quiet voice echoed in the tunnel, each echo growing louder and louder until his words were bouncing around in a scream of sound. He swung his scythe forward, seemingly without warning, but North was ready for it and had it caught up in his swords in an instant.

From then on, it was a blur of swords and daggers and scythe. Pitch was hampered by the size of the tunnel and the wound in his shoulder, and was struggling to hold his own. North drove him backward and Tooth harried him from behind. Jack was able to get a few shots of ice in, but for the most part, he was left to stand and watch, useless. The tunnel was too cramped.

He saw his opening when Pitch, panting heavily, half turned to strike at Tooth and North moved with him. It left Jack a clear line to the ground at Pitch's feet. He iced the stone floor and, within seconds, Pitch was on his back, scythe disappearing into wisps of shadow, North's swords at his throat.

He started to chuckle, but there was no mirth in it. "So this is it, then," he said. His arms twitched like he was going to gesture, but North dug the points of his swords into Pitch's neck further. "You've defeated the Nightmare King for a second time and have him completely at your mercy. What are you going to do, North? Kill a spirit in cold blood? Rid the world of fear once and for all?"

Jack shifted on his feet, uneasy with the direction this was taking. He wanted to know what Pitch was up to as much as any of them, wanted to protect children, but… He wasn't sure he had the stomach for this. Not when Pitch was clearly exhausted from the short fight, clearly not at his best, clearly not a threat.

Unless it was all a lie.

"What have you done, Pitch?" North asked again, pressing down until a thin trickle of dark blood ran down Pitch's neck. Tooth was next to him, looking just as furious and deadly. Jack's staff was pointed at Pitch, out of reach but ready to cause damage. He wasn't sure he could do anything, though, not to someone who looked like he'd given up, who wasn't fighting back. He didn't know if he could call Pitch's bluff, if it came down to that.

"I have done _nothing_. And that's the problem." Pitch laughed and Jack shivered at the sound. It sent a chill down his back the same way nails on a chalkboard did, even though the two sounds were nothing alike. "What is hope without despair, wonder without disappointment? Joy without misery, fun without, well." He suddenly looked over and met Jack's eyes. "I suppose children have always been able to make fun with or without a Guardian's help."

Jack didn't flinch at that, but it was a near thing. Instead, he narrowed his eyes and stepped forward, lower his staff enough to point directly at Pitch's torso instead of his head. A clear threat, but Pitch just laughed some more.

"Well?" he said. Suddenly he was pushing up into North's blades and snarling, "If you're going to do it, _do it_. Or have you gone soft all those years up in your toyshop? Have you forgotten who you really are, Nicholas St. North?"

Instead of pressing down harder and skewering Pitch through the throat, North lifted his swords and backed off, shaking his head and looking sad. 

"Who I was is not who I am," North said. He didn't put away his weapon, but he was more relaxed, to the point where even Jack could see it.

Pitch looked almost betrayed and turned his head to Tooth, but she, too, was backing off, until the only one still threatening him was Jack.

"And you?" Pitch asked, raising up onto his elbows and staring at Jack, his gaze daring him to do it. "I was there, when you died. Your sister's fear was sweet as rose syrup, and yours- Oh Jack, if only you could _taste_ the flavor of your fear. Did you know she was afraid of water for the rest of her-"

Jack let loose an inarticulate cry of rage and shot a stream of ice and frost barely over Pitch's head. How _dare_ he talk about his sister like that? How dare he act like he had any business being near her, ever? How dare he reduce Jack's sacrifice to nothing but the fear he felt?

When he was done, there were icy stalactites hanging from the ceiling and the walls of the tunnel were iced as far as he could see into the darkness. Tooth's hand was on his shoulder, gripping it firmly, not like she was holding him back but like she was offering to back him up if he wanted to destroy Pitch right then and there.

He leaned into her touch, her hand a brand against his skin, suddenly exhausted. Pitch was smirking at him from the floor, blood still oozing sluggishly from his shoulder and neck. So Jack turned to North, deciding to just ignore Pitch completely.

"Is he lying?" Jack asked about Pitch's claim that children needed fear if they wanted to have nicer emotions. Surprisingly, it was Tooth who answered, her voice gentle and her hand squeezing his shoulder.

"I think it's something both North and I suspected, Jack. We just didn't want it to be true. It goes against everything Guardians stand for."

Pitch scoffed from the floor. "If I absolutely must explain it further, you can not have light without darkness."

"Then you can't have darkness without light," Jack snapped at him. "And you seemed pretty willing to destroy us."

Pitch inclined his head, like Jack was making a good point. Which,okay,he was, but he hadn't meant to. He hadn't meant to talk to Pitch again at all. Tooth's hand was still on his shoulder and he couldn't seem to not pay attention to it, to not feel the warmth seeping into his bones.

"What do we do?" he asked.

North nodded, as though coming to a decision. Tooth's hand finally left Jack's shoulder as she flew back to hover near North. He tried not to let the crushing emptiness in his gut grow, but by the way Pitch was watching him when he glanced over, he wasn't successful. He waited for Pitch to mock him more, braced himself, but Pitch was silent.

"We cannot allow Pitch complete freedom," North said, his face and voice grave. "But if we sometimes are bringing him for outings while a Guardian is watching, he can do no harm."

Tooth nodded, and Jack had a sinking feeling in his stomach. "You talked about this," he said, not making it a question.

"Of course," Tooth said. "We had our suspicions this was what was happening, so we had to have an idea of how to fix it before we came down here."

Of course they did. They talked about it while he… what, was making snowballs? Thickening ice on ponds? Whatever he was doing, they had talked about it while he wasn't there. And shouldn't he have been, as a Guardian? Didn't he get a say in things?

"And if I do not wish to be trotted around like a show pony, doing tricks on command?" Pitch's voice broke Jack out of his thoughts. Pitch sounded absolutely disgusted by the idea, and hatred dripped from every word.

North shrugged. "Then here you stay, until there is nothing left of you. We will find another way to make the children believe again. It is no problem if you are not wanting to breathe the fresh air again."

North walked easily around Pitch, and Tooth flew over him, high up and brushing against the ceiling. Only Jack was left, and he edged around Pitch, as close to the wall as possible. North was walking confidently into the dark, Tooth at his side, so Jack tried to do the same. He wasn't sure how successful he was, because he jumped when Pitch's voice came from behind them.

"I'll do it," he said, his words dripping with venom. "You won't be able to keep me in chains forever, you know."

"Maybe, maybe not," North said. "But for now is enough. Someone will come for you in a few days. Be ready."

They walked in the dark, all the way back to the main cavern. The only thing letting Jack know where his friends were was the sound of footsteps. There were the right number of them, but he couldn't shake the fear that he wasn't following his friends, he was following… something else. He could feel frost trailing his footsteps.

He was relieved when the darkness lightened and he was able to see them, to be sure he wasn't following a shade to his death. Within minutes they were at the mouth of the tunnel. Watching North walk calmly down the stairs, thinking about how he had looked so willing to kill Pitch right then and there, Jack couldn't help himself from asking.

"What'd he mean?" He trotted to catch up to North's long stride. "When he was talking about who you really are?"

"It is nothing, Jack," North said, shaking his head. "That version of me is buried in the past. There is no need to be digging him up."

Jack nodded. There were things in his past, things he didn't want to be dug up either. Things he had done as a young spirit that he wasn't proud of.

North pulled another snow globe out of his seemingly bottomless pocket and shook it up before throwing it to the ground. A portal opened and he motioned both Tooth and Jack through. Within seconds, they were back above ground, in the clearing with Bunny and Sandy.

"How'd it go?" Bunny asked, while Sandy flashed a bunch of symbols over his head that Jack couldn't quite get a read on.

"Agreed, Sandy. Pitch is up to no good, but what no good exactly?" North asked. "He would not have agreed to our plan so readily if he was not."

Oh. They all knew what the plan was. Of course they did. They were all proper Guardians, who took their jobs seriously and weren't- Weren't Jack. No one had consulted him about what he thought they should do, and maybe it was better that way. It meant he didn't have to come up with anything. It meant he could focus on _fun_.

He called down a swirl of wind while everyone else was still talking, and let it carry him away, not noticing the concerned look on Sandy's face as he watched Jack's retreating back.


	4. In Which Favors Are Asked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhh does anyone who is good at coming up with cute scenarios want to be a sounding board for this fic? Hit me up? :D? :D? :(

If Jack had thought his life was going to change, once the Guardians had a united purpose again, he would have been disappointed by the way he was neatly cut out of the "Guard Pitch" rotation.

"It is not safe, Jack," North had told him, one large hand on his shoulder. "You are the newest of Guardians, it is too dangerous."

"Yeah, mate," Bunny said. "Maybe in a hundred years."

"Think of all the time you'd waste not having fun if you had to help too," Tooth said, looking concerned but not overly worried.

Sandy flashed some symbols over his head, slow enough for Jack to get that he was agreeing with the rest of them.

He would have argued back with them, _should_ have argued back with them, but what was the point? It would be centuries before they saw him as more than a reckless kid, if ever. Instead, he lied and said he understood, and that he needed to get back to Burgess for a snowday.

They let him slip out without a word, already turned back to going over who got Pitch when.

Jack took the North Wind back to his pond, skidding across the ice on the edge of his feet as he touched down. It would be the heart of winter soon, and he would be too busy making fun to worry about the rest of the Guardians and Pitch, and what they were doing. He didn't care.

He threw himself into winter with an abandon he hadn't felt before, an abandon that looked and felt suspiciously like running. If he could only stay ahead, stay on his feet, he wouldn't fall and be consumed by the loneliness chasing him.

He only let himself think about what the Guardians and Pitch might be doing in the fleeting moments he wasn't racing around the globe, running west on the wind so the sun never set before him and the laughter of children never faded from his ears.

Even he had to rest sometimes, though, maybe not as often as a human, but often enough that he found himself pushing harder to delay it each time. Because that was when he couldn't stop thinking about the other Guardians.

Was there even a point to him being a Guardian if they didn't want him helping? Did they… did they know about what happened in Antarctica that year, how tempted he was to join Pitch? Did they not _trust_ him? Every time the thought came up, it had him rubbing his chest in discomfort, like he could soothe away the hurt there.

Or maybe it was that they forgot he wasn't an eternal teenager. He loved fun, and loved being carefree and _happy_ , but that didn't mean he was still a child. He'd been a spirit for almost four centuries, and maybe that was young compared to them, but he knew the difference between it being time for work and time for fun. Just because they didn't always agree with his judgment didn't make him wrong. He wasn't a child.

He'd started snowball fights on college campuses, after all. He knew things.

It wasn't until spring was just around the corner that he realized that he shouldn't be surprised, or even hurt. They never did come to him when they didn't desperately need another body. He just wasn't who they turned to when any of them needed help unless there was literally no other choice. Which was good, great even. He didn't want responsibilities, he didn't want to have to put aside his fun to do boring things. He'd made that clear from the beginning, from before he even agreed to be a Guardian.

Still, even if he was going to say no most the time, it'd be nice to be asked once in awhile. Instead of ignored, like it was now. But really, he didn't care. He was carefree, happy, and full of fun. He didn't need to be bogged down by them. His priority was making sure kids had a great winter. That was it.

"Jack!" Tooth's voice had him startling out of the tree he was sleeping in, falling to the ground below. He landed hard, neither the dusting of snow on the ground nor the wind cushioning him.

"Oh no!" she said, hovering by his side and offering him a hand up. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

He pushed himself slowly to his feet, shaking off the snow and dirt that covered the back of his hoodie. It had been time to wake up anyway; kids were almost going to be out of school, judging by where the sun was. "What's up, Tooth?" he asked as he grabbed his staff from where it had fallen next to him. When any of the Guardians came to him instead of him going to them, there was a good chance he was going to need it.

"I hate to ask you to do this," she said, wringing her hands together. He smiled, trying to put her at ease, but it didn't seem to work because she rushed on, saying, "But North's on vacation and Bunny's getting geared up for Easter and Sandy's always got so much to do-"

Of course. Last choice.

"-too many for my fairies to collect, it's strange, actually, so many teeth shouldn't be lost by so many children all at once, but I have to go out with them, I can't just leave it for another night, and I have no one else that I trust to ask-"

The warmth that spread through Jack at her saying that she trusted him distracted him enough that he missed whatever she was actually asking for. It felt so good to know that, even if he was last choice, he was still a choice. This wasn't like being picked last in gym class. Sure he was picked last, but it was out of the elite. It made all the difference, and he was so grateful that she'd told him that.

"Uh," he said when he realized she was looking at him expectantly. "Can you say that last bit again?"

She smiled fondly at him. "Oh, Jack. I know it's a lot to ask, but could you go around with PItch tonight and make sure he's not too… aggressive with his nightmares?"

The thought of being alone with Pitch sent a flutter of fear through his stomach. The last time they were alone together, half a century ago, Pitch had almost convinced him to join the dark's side. And he had not once seen Pitch, with or without the other Guardians, without it turning into violence.

"I don't know…" he said, chewing on his lip.

"He hasn't tried to cause much trouble," Tooth assured him, seemingly not realizing how _not_ reassuring the word "much" was. "And I know that you can handle him if he does."

The burst of pride chased away the fears in his stomach and made him grin while Tooth continued, because yeah, he'd do it.

"He doesn't have full access to the shadows or nightmare sand or anything," she said, flitting nervously back and forth across the clearing while she tried to convince Jack. "I don't think he could cause trouble even if he tried. Of course, that could be a trick, but, oh, I don't know, I don't think it is. Please, Jack?"

"Sure," Jack said, before he could think more about it. He could handle this for one night, and it felt good to be included. Hell, at that point, they could've asked for the Moon himself, and Jack would've tried to catch him for them. It wasn't a good feeling, realizing how pathetic he was, and quickly soured his mood.

Tooth didn't notice as she zoomed in for a hug and let go just as quickly to hover in front of him. "Thank you! I'll come back tonight with him, it'll be fine, you'll see!" And then she was gone.

Jack stared after her for a long time.


	5. In Which Favors Are Granted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert: I think the last chapter was the last one that didn't contain Pitch in some way. So, you know, enjoy.

Tooth was true to her word and reappeared in the clearing right as dusk was fading into night, thanks to one of North's snow globes. Trailing behind her was a bored-looking Pitch. Jack's eyes were immediately drawn to the golden manacles, made from Sandy's sand, around his wrists, connected with a short chain.

"Jeez, I didn't think they'd actually get a leash on you," he said before he could think better of it.

Pitch snarled and started forward, saying, "If you think-" and Jack fell back a step before Tooth flew between them.

"No fighting," she said, her voice hard. She was looking at Pitch; Jack wasn't actually sure if it was meant for himself at all. Pitch's jaw clenched as he audibly ground his teeth and Jack was sure there was going to be some sort of outburst.

Instead, Pitch suddenly relaxed, a lazy smirk crossing his face. "Of course," he said, smooth like he hadn't just sounded like he wanted to rip Jack's throat out. "After all, it would hardly be a fair fight."

"Yeah, I'd kick your ass," Jack said. He would, too. He'd helped beat Pitch when he was at full strength. This watered down version wouldn't be a problem. He almost laughed with glee at the sour look on Pitch's face and let the wind carry him up in a somersault, grinning.

"How does this work?" he called from above. Tooth didn't look amused, so he floated down a few feet, until he was almost eye-level with Pitch.

"You're on North America tonight," Tooth said and handed him a few snow globes to carry in his hoodie pocket and hood. "These will take you wherever you need to do. Just follow him around around and make sure he doesn't do anything too evil."

"How do I know what's too evil?" Jack asked, looking at Pitch suspiciously. He didn't seem to be plotting anything at the moment, but who knew.

Tooth smiled at him, already moving away to get on with her own work. "Use your best judgment," she said before heading off.

"You know I don't have any best judgment," he yelled after her, pleased with the way she laughed.

He was still grinning and smug when he looked over at Pitch, who had his arms crossed and was looking off into the distance, clearly bored. Jack floated a little closer — not within arms-reach of course — and waited for a moment to see what Pitch would do.

He didn't have the patience to wait very long, though, and soon was circling Pitch, slow and lazy, on the wind. "Well?"

"Well what?" Pitch asked after another moment of tooth grinding stillness.

"Are you gonna stand there all night or are you gonna go do your thing?" Jack asked, coming back to face him. Pitch still looked away, seeing something Jack couldn't, and Jack almost missed the quick flash of surprise that flew across Pitch's face. Almost. He pointed to the west, anyway. He could puzzle over it later. "Burgess is that way."

Pitch's eyes snapped to meet Jack's and he sneered, the twist of his mouth turning his face into something ugly and sharp. He didn't look any better than when they'd fought in the tunnels in his lair, Jack realized. He almost looked worse.

"You would release me on your precious town?" Pitch asked through the sneer.

"I wouldn't call it releasing you," Jack said and gestured to the manacles. He was glad they were there, but something uncomfortable was starting to turn in his stomach the more he looked at them. "After all, you're still all chained up. I bet I can stop you at any time."

Pitch opened his mouth, but snapped it shut again, without saying anything. Instead, he stalked off silently. Jack's hackles prickled at the clear assumption that Jack would just follow him, but found himself doing it anyway. It wouldn't be good if he lost Pitch the very first time the Guardians trusted him with any sort of responsibility.

Four hours later, he was regretting ever agreeing to this.

"This is so boring," he complained, sitting on the wind next to Pitch, while he sent thin, weak strands of nightmare sand through a window to the sleeping girl inside. "And if you keep grinding your teeth like that you're going to flatten them, and that won't be scary at all."

Pitch hissed out a breath and turned to look at him, golden eyes filled with a rage that had Jack flinching back. "Will you _stop_ your incessant _complaining_."

"But this is _boring_ ," Jack said. "You're just standing there,making sand move around! That's not scary, that's just-" He stopped short with a shriek and shot straight up in the air as Pitch lunged for him.

"Hey!" he yelled, indignant. The sand Pitch sent up toward him with a snarl, his face a rictus of rage, fell short. Jack dodged to the side anyway and yelled down, "Man I can't wait to see what the Guardians say when I tell them about this, asshole!"

Pitch seemed to freeze for a moment, then straightened and smoothed his robes as best he could with two hands that were chained together. Jack supposed it would've looked dignified if they were free, but as it was, he just looked ridiculous.

"I see," Pitch said, when he looked up at Jack again, his face expressionless. "Then there's no reason to continue this farce."

Something in the look on his face and the way he had stopped short made Jack feel a little queasy as he slowly drifted down to the ground, a respectable distance away. "I guess I don't have to say anything," he said with caution in his voice and an uneasy feeling in his stomach. He laughed a little and added, "I've been told I could drive anyone up a wall. You're in good company with that."

He wasn't sure what he was doing. He should tell Tooth, at least, that Pitch had attacked him, but… he could admit that he'd been goading Pitch. And the look of pure _something_ on his face when Jack threatened to tattle had him pausing. It was probably stupid to do it, but he could just not bring it up, and it wouldn't be like he was lying to Tooth's face directly.

Pitch was staring at him with a look of what Jack could only call confusion, before he quickly snapped back to cool disdain. "Then stop bothering me."

Something unpleasant was still twisting in Jack's gut, so he just shrugged and said, "Okay."

Instead of hovering like he had been, he spent the rest of the time making little flurries of snow catch on the natural dips and rolls in the ground, one eye on Pitch, one eye on the snow. By the time they were done, parts of the southern United States had had freak flurries go through overnight, and school was canceled because of slippery roads, while the northern parts and Canada were just cursing the cold. Pitch had sent a glare his way when he realized all the nightmares he'd sent the kids overnight were forgotten as soon as they saw the dusting of snow on the ground.

Other than that, he hadn't said a word since attacking Jack. The silence creeped Jack out enough that he caught Pitch looking at him more than once with a smug, "I can taste your fear" smirk.

The last snow globe brought them back to Jack's clearing, where Tooth was waiting for them.

"Any trouble, Jack?" was the first thing Tooth asked, and Jack could see Pitch tensing his jaw at the question.

"Nah," Jack said, shrugging. "It was boring." It wasn't even really a lie, sort of

"Good," she said and gave him a quick hug. "Thank you so much! If there's anything you want, you just have to ask, okay? I owe you."

"Sure," he said, nodding. Pitch was looking at him with a calculating gaze that Jack didn't like. He almost regretted not saying anything to Tooth about the way Pitch'd lost it and attacked him, but in the end kept quiet about it. He said he wouldn't say anything, so he wasn't.

Besides, it wasn't like they were going to add him into the whole rotation they had going on anytime soon. He didn't have to worry about it.


	6. In Which Someone Loses It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, since I have a job and am doing NaNoWriMo this year, updates are going to slow because I have less time for editing. I'm working on this fic for NaNo so, you know, don't worry about it being abandoned! It's not! I'm just pressed for time.
> 
> Hey, remember that time I almost doubled the wordcount with one chapter? Whoops...

The lion of March blew out and Burgess welcomed the lamb of spring early. By mid-March, it was too hot for snow to stick or frost to stay. Jack usually fled North for the spring and summer, living above the Arctic Circle on the icy tundras where the wind was strong and the permafrost deep.

When he was younger, he'd tried following the season around the world, but the Snow Children and Frost Children had one half of the southern hemisphere covered, and the Snow Giants the other. They didn't need his help, and there was a distressing difference between being unnoticed and being not needed.

He had just touched down on the outskirts of Yellowknife — ready to dig in for another month or so before he had to move on again — when a hole opened in the ground and Bunny popped out.

"Hey!" Jack said, grinning. "Didja decide to come join the fun?" He spun out a dusting of snow, frosting the tips of Bunny's fur.

"Dream on, kid," Bunny said, scowling and shaking the snow off his fur. "Think you got time to take a break from romping in the snow to do your real job?"

The worst part was that Jack was pretty sure Bunny wasn't actually trying to be mean. He just… spoke his mind, and didn't like the cold. And didn't remember that not everybody was the same.

"Depends." he said, stuffing down the hurt and grinning wider. "Need me to come help paint eggs?"

Bunny snorted, and shook his head. "Not on your life. I don't have time to be following Pitch with Easter 'round the corner. It's your turn to watch the blighter."

"Oh," Jack said. The disappointment he expected to feel at having to do something so boring never came. He was just relieved to not have to paint eggs. Bunny never let him do enough ones with snowflakes and frost patterns. "Okay, yeah."

"Be careful, kid," Bunny said, making Jack's hackles rise. Most the time, Bunny was as good a friend as any of the other Guardians. But around Easter, he just… seemed to lose his brain-to-mouth filter. "This isn't a game."

"I know that," Jack said. "It's way too boring to be a game."

Bunny snorted. "Come on, I'll show you where North keeps the snow globes."

Jack followed him down the hole, the wind pushing him along at Bunny's speed and blowing him up the exit like a geyser. He landed in a snowdrift, laughing. When he looked up, Bunny was watching him fondly.

"Done goofing off?" Bunny asked, but it didn't hold the level of exasperation Jack had learned to expect around Easter.

"Yeah," he said, grinning and letting the wind swirl around him, blowing off the snow that covered his back.

The snow globes were in an immaculate storage room, shelved and labeled with the destination in North's precise script. Jack trailed his finger over the glass as he walked around the room, leaving little curls of frost in his finger's wake.

"We're letting him have four different stops in five or six hours, or until you get bored." Bunny winked at him, and for a moment, Jack thought he knew about the way Pitch had lost it the last time someone asked him to do this. But Bunny didn't seem like he was going to say anything else, and something was gnawing at the back of Jack's mind.

"Is that enough?" he asked, thinking about how bony Pitch had looked, the way his cheeks were sunken in and his hands terrifying and skeletal. Jack had seen that sort of thing before, in some of the people who didn't survive his storms. In some of the people that were in his returned memories.

"Kids are believing again," Bunny said, nodding. That… wasn't quite what Jack meant but it was good news anyway. He supposed the answer to what he was actually asking didn't really matter, since the kids were believing in them again.

"You're on Wednesdays, kid," Bunny said. At least it was a school night, so the kids would be going in early. "Good luck, I have eggs to paint."

With that, Bunny opened a new hole and jumped down it, leaving Jack to find his own way back from the North Pole. Luckily, the North Wind was happy to oblige when Jack stepped outside, a handful of the tiny snow globes in his pocket. He let it boost him upward, up above the clouds where he could coax speeds out of it that he justs couldn't closer to the ground without accidentally calling up an epic blizzard or thunderstorm.

He surfed the wind all the way across the ocean and back to his temporary resting place, touching down with a laugh and a pat for the wind that had brought him so far.

"Thanks, buddy," he said. The wind swirled around him once, ruffling his hair, then drifted off until even rattling the branches on the trees around him grew silent.

Wednesday night came quickly, a warm breeze, so different from _his_ wind, making the snow he'd dusted the trees with start to melt and drip to the ground. Darkness fell swiftly, far more quickly than Jack wanted. He couldn't delay for too long without eating into the six hours he had to follow Pitch around. So as soon as it was completely dark and the Man in the Moon was looking down on him, he threw a snow globe to the ground and stepped through the portal into Pitch's lair.

"Pitch?" he called, a thrill of fear going through him at the way the shadows crept higher on the walls even though there was no visible light source, just a dim glow that cast everything in shadow.

" _Delicious_ ," Pitch's voice hissed from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Jack shuddered and gripped his staff tighter. He hated being down underground, where the wind couldn't reach him; doubly so when Pitch was intent on scaring the shit out of him. ":Come on, Pitch, don't you want to get out of here? It's depressing down here."

Another hiss came from an indeterminable place ahead of him, this one significantly angrier. "So, Jack Frost, you've come to-"

"Yeah, I've come to take you for walkies," Jack said over Pitch, his mouth ignoring his brain's desperate pleading to just shut up until they were above the surface.

"Down here-" this time, it sounded like Pitch was right behind him. Jack whirled around, only to find empty space, the shadow of claws looming over his own shadow. He whirled around again, and again, there was no one behind him. "-no one can hear you scream."

His fear spiked at the feeling of a claw scraping across the back of his neck. It occurred to him that he didn't know if Sandy had already been here, to put the manacles on Pitch, or if he had enough use of his arms to snap Jack's neck and-

A dark chuckle came from behind him, interrupting his thought spiral. He stiffened, his body filled with a child's dread of knowing something was behind him but hoping that if he just didn't look it wouldn't attack.

"Oh, Jack," Pitch said. There was a whisper of breath against the back of Jack's neck, raising goosebumps in its wake. Still, he didn't turn. "Do you think your foolish courage can keep you safe from me?"

"No," Jack said honestly, and held up a snow globe, gripping it so tight his joints creaked and grated. "But I can leave you here, alone, in the dark, until-"

He broke off at Pitch's laughter, which echoed around the space they were in and sent another shiver down Jack's spine. "Projecting your fears onto me? Poor Jack, so alone and lonely. The Guardian with barely any followers who still gets walked through more often than he gets seen. Who-"

Jack forced himself to breathe through his fear, until he was calm enough to shrug a little, as though he didn't care what Pitch was saying, as though it wasn't making his skin feel too tight. He tossed a random globe to the floor in front of him.

"Wait-"

This time, Jack could actually feel the presence of a body behind him and turned slowly. Pitch was standing behind him, too close for comfort, but Jack couldn't back up without going through the portal, so he held his ground.

"Yes?" he said, smirking a little. Pitch looked altogether disgusted with himself, but he didn't falter, just stepped into Jack's space even more. Jack stopped himself from stepping backward once again, and Pitch smiled sickly at him.

"Giving up so easily?" Pitch asked, his hands crossed in front of him like that was how he meant to be standing instead of how it was forced by the manacles Sandy had already put on him. He kind of wished Sandy had at least waited for him to get Pitch before leaving. "Running back to the other Guardians with your tail between your legs?"

Jack steeled himself and forced his fear down, burying it under the weight of the ever-present emptiness in his gut. He snapped his arm forward, grabbing Pitch by the wrist and threw himself backward into the portal, dragging Pitch after him.

Pitch made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a squawk of surprise as they fell backward. Jack landed hard on the ground, his shoulders and head in a mud puddle, Pitch on top of him. After a moment of shocked stillness, Pitch scrambled off of him and pushed himself to his feet, very obviously trying to look like he hadn't been scrambling.

"Ugh," Jack said, pushing himself up and shaking his head so that mud went flying. "I _hate_ spring."

Pitch was staring at him like if he just stared hard enough, Jack would burst into flames and go away. It was a look Jack was familiar with, but it had never struck fear in him quite like it did coming from Pitch.

"Look," he said, because never let it be said Jack Frost could be scared silent. "You're not gonna mess this up for me. The Guardians want you out creating fear and they want me watching you while you do it, so. "He paused for a moment, but nothing good came to him, and he finally ended with a lame, "So suck it up."

"Suck it up," Pitch said, rolling the words around in his mouth like he was feeling them out, had never heard them before. His eyes snapped back to Jack's, and Jack took a step back, making Pitch smiled just enough for his pointed teeth to show. He stalked forward, and Jack fell back until he was against a tree and couldn't go further.

"Suck it up," Pitch said again. That was definitely anger starting to bleed through. The hairs on the back of Jack's neck tried to rise against the mud covering them.

"Uh," he said.

"There is a lot I will put up with for this _charade_ , Guardian, but I will not put up with being thrown around like a sack of potatoes by an impatient. Little. Boy."

He was all up in Jack's face, and all Jack could think was that he finally understood what spitting mad meant. It took a moment for Pitch's words to register, but when they did, Jack couldn't hold back a burst of laughter that was less nervous than it should've been.

He set the crook of his staff against Pitch's shoulder and put steady pressure on it, until Pitch wavered a little and had to step back. He snarled at Jack, but Jack just grinned and wiped off his face with the clean part of his hoodie sleeve.

"Yeah, okay," Jack said, because he could understand not wanting someone stronger than him tossing his body around, no matter how temporary his weakness was. "I don't toss you around, you keep the creepy 'woo I'm the Boogeyman, fear me' stuff to a minimum when I'm picking you up."

Pitch had opened his mouth halfway through what Jack was saying, but snapped it shut instead of interrupting. When Jack was done, there was a long moment of suspicious silence before Pitch said, "To a minimum."

"Yeah." Jack shrugged and grimaced. The mud in his hair and on the back of his neck was starting to get dry and itchy.

Pitch slowly started to smile, like he'd gotten away with something. Jack wasn't sure which part of the deal he'd offered was making Pitch look like that, but he wanted to take that part back. Instead, he stepped around Pitch and headed for the lake nearby.

There wasn't the sound of footsteps behind him, but when he looked back, Pitch was there, following warily. At the lake, Jack piled the snow globes on the ground and shrugged out of his hoodie, the wind on his bare skin feeling nice and cool.

"What are you doing?" Pitch's strangled voice came from somewhere behind him, not too close, so he didn't bother turning around. Instead, he waded out far enough that he could bend over and dunk his head under the water, scrubbing with his fingers until it felt like all the mud was gone. The water was slowly growing a film of ice around him, so he ignored Pitch's question — it was pretty obvious what he was doing — and swished his hoodie around in the water until all the mud was off.

When it was clean and safely back on him, the wetness quickly turning to ice that would crumble off as he moved, he turned and waded out of the lake. Pitch was standing on the shore, looking faintly horrified, and for a moment, Jack wondered what was so wrong with his body that it put that look on Pitch's face.

"What?" he asked, almost nervous, but Pitch just shook his head and turned away, so Jack shrugged and moved on. "Okay, I already used the Yellowknife one, so might as well get started here."

He could see a scowl on the side of Pitch's face as he strode off toward the town. Jack trailed behind him for the better part of an hour, making little snow drifts as soon as the temperature dropped. But screwing around was only fun for so long. And something was bothering him.

"Hey," he said, catching up with Pitch where he was standing in the shadows of a building. "What happened to your NIghtmares?"

Pitch stiffened before slowly turning to face Jack. "They wasted away," he said, and sneered at Jack. "That's what you wanted, right?"

"We wanted you to stop hurting people," Jack snapped back.

"Mm," Pitch hummed in mocking agreement, then spread his arms, indicating the thin strands of nightmare sand inching through the town. "And yet…"

Jack refused to take the bait. He knew that they were doing the right thing, and Pitch wouldn't make him doubt that. Couldn't make him doubt that.

"Why'd the Nightmares waste away?" he asked, repeating Pitch's words back to him and barely resisted adding air quotes.

In a flash, Pitch was looming over him and the creeping fear that was following Jack around, just from being near Pitch, grew until he could feel it in his throat. "They fed on fear, Jack, and they starved to death; is that what you wanted to hear? That your noble pursuit was successful and the Nightmares are no longer a problem to deal with?"

"N- No," Jack said, faltering back a step. He didn't believe that, that they had trapped all those horses that weren't quite real down there only to let them starve. "They had you to feed on, didn't they?"

Pitch laughed, the sound somewhere between scornful and weary. It made Jack's heart unexpectedly clench, and he couldn't stop himself from raising a hand to press against his chest. Pitch had turned away, though, and didn't notice.

"When you can't die of fear, you eventually grow numb to it," he said, his voice oddly toneless. "Creating fear is a delicate balance between tension and release, and Nightmares were only made to heighten the _tension_." He spat the word, and turned back to Jack, his face twisted and furious. "After a decade of having to see your deepest fears played out over and over, you stop being afraid. When I finally could remember what fear felt like again, it was too late."

Jack stepped forward, into Pitch's space, unsure of what he was doing. All he knew was that he was beginning to realize that even actions as inherently good as those of the Guardians had consequences, and he didn't like it. The realization or the consequences.

Pitch eyed him warily, his jaw tense and shoulders stiff. The hollows in his face were deeper than they had been a month ago, Jack noted absently, as he scrutinized Pitch's face for any hint of a lie.

When he couldn't find one, he took a deep breath and said, "I'm sorry."

Pitch flinched back as though struck and snarled, "What did you say to me?"

"I said I'm sorry," Jack said again. He chewed on his lower lip for a moment, and added, "That must've really sucked."

Pitch took a step back, then another one. "I didn't ask for your pity."

"You don't have it," Jack said, shrugging. Whatever he was feeling wasn't pity, for sure. It was some toxic mix of regret and grief and horror that should've had Pitch in his space, inhaling it like the scent of a fine wine. Instead, he was staring at Jack with something unreadable in his eyes and seemed ready to take another step back if Jack moved wrong. "I don't think the Guardians knew-"

"Don't be a fool," Pitch said. He seemed shrunken in on himself, a mummy that just didn't know to lie back down. "They know. They knew when I fled down there, they knew when the Nightmares followed. They didn't care."

"That-" Jack started and had to swallow before continuing. "That can't be true. North would never-"

"You don't know him," Pitch snapped. "You think fifty years gives you any insight into his mind? Fifty years is a blink of an eye. You know _nothing_ of what he would or wouldn't do."

Jack opened his mouth, but shut it again when he couldn't find anything to say to that. Pitch was right. He didn't really know North, he didn't really know any of them. He hung around sometimes, sure, but they weren't friends who shared all their secrets, not like he'd seen kids do.

"Okay," he finally said, not looking at Pitch. He watched as frost spiraled up and down his staff.

Pitch huffed out a breath. "Are we done?" he asked, anger tinging the words.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Do your thing, I'll just- Yeah." He didn't want to look up to see the smug smile on Pitch's face, so instead, he turned away and walked off a couple yards, then let the wind carry him up to a roof where he could watch Pitch without having to be near him.

It wasn't often that he lost himself in his own head when he was around other people, but this time… He couldn't stop thinking about North knowing that the Nightmares were going to die, that Bunny and Tooth and Sandy probably had too. That they just didn't care. And he had let them do it, had been _glad_ that Pitch was sent to face an eternity alone with only Nightmares for company.

It had never occurred to him that they could die. Or that the Guardians would know that and still lock Pitch underground with them.

Maybe… maybe they thought Pitch's fear would be enough to sustain them. Maybe they didn't know that fear could run out of a person like any other energy.

Maybe he was grasping at straws.

He started when Pitch appeared next to him out of the shadows cast by the chimney in the pale moonlight. When he looked up, Pitch was looking out across the open expanse, a slight downturn to his lips.

"Are you ready to move on?" he asked, still looking out across the city. "Or are you too busy brooding?"

"I'm not _brooding_ ," Jack said, indignant. "That's your job. "

But still, he used his staff to pull himself up and pulled out the remaining snow globes, holding them out to Pitch in his cupped hands.

"Where to next?" he asked. After a long moment of tense stillness, Pitch turned and slowly picked one out of his hands, taking care not to touch Jack's skin at all even though it was awkward with his hands tied together like they were.

"This will do," Pitch said and threw it onto the rooftop ahead of them. He swept through before Jack could say anything, leaving Jack to hurry after him before the portal closed. He made it by the skin of his teeth, nearly stumbling into Pitch's back before he caught himself.

A horrible thought was forming in Jack's head and he opened his mouth before he could think better of it. "Is that why you're so… skeleton-y?"

Pitch turned slowly on his heel, and Jack took a hasty step back.

"I mean," he said quickly. "You just look, uh. Kinda sick? Like you're wasting away like your Nightmares?" He prayed to the Man in the Moon that Pitch wasn't going to kill him.

"Is that so," Pitch said mildly, which scared Jack more than anything else that had happened since he dragged Pitch out of his lair. His eyes flicked down to Pitch's wrists to make sure the dream sand still twisted over them, and when he looked back up, Pitch was smirking at him.

"Don't worry, Jack," Pitch said in a soothing voice that dripped with underlying hatred. He raised his hands and pretend to try to pull them apart before dropping them again. "Still chained for you to trot out your pet Nightmare King whenever you want."

"I'm not-" Jack sputtered. "I don't- That's not what I'm doing. Not what _we're_ doing." Something was turning over in his stomach, waking with his slowly cresting horror.

"Is that so," Pitch said, smiling again in a way that made Jack want to back away and run. "To answer your question. Getting fed crumbs four times a week doesn't fill anyone's empty stomach."

Jack shook his head, glaring. The least Pitch could do, after trying to kill them all, was be truthful. "But the Guardians are doing two days each, all night. I'm the only one doing this once a week."

Pitch's smile grew, and he leaned closer, opening his mouth and inhaling in a way that made Jack shiver with the fear settling down in the pit of his stomach. "Is that what they told you?" he asked when he straightened.

"Uh, no, I just assumed-" Jack started, still distracted by the way Pitch had tasted his fear, a shiver making its way down his spine. "I mean, they wouldn't-"

Pitch's laughter was sudden and loud, making Jack flinch back. "You don't know them at all, do you, Jack? You still have a child's belief in the inherent goodness of the world. It's time to grow up and remember that you _Guardians_ don't have a Geneva Convention."

"What's a Geneva Convention?" Jack asked, bristling and confused. He knew the Guardians enough to know they wouldn't do this if they knew. Someone just had to tell them. He could go to North after this and let him know, and North would-

Would what? Be willing to take on more work? Make Tooth miss two nights of collecting a week? If they were only letting Pitch out for half a week at a time, they must've had their reasons, must've been too busy. He could've helped, and the realization that they really didn't trust him struck him hard.

"What now?" Pitch asked, casually blowing on his fingernails and buffing them on his robe. "Afraid they'll never trust you? They shouldn't, not after you almost betrayed them in Antarctica. They're right to keep you out of their business, you know."

He looked positively bored, and Jack was suddenly not so much confused as filled with rage. He hadn't almost betrayed them; Pitch didn't know what he was talking about. And Jack was going to make him regret opening his big fat mouth.

He stepped back enough to point his staff at Pitch, who still looked bored and unaffected even as the weapon was leveled at him. Jack shot a stream of frost at him, feeling a sick pleasure in the way Pitch's eyes widened before he was diving out of the way. He stepped forward, shooting another blast that had Pitch cursing and rolling out of the way.

In Antarctica, even if Jack had felt a flicker of indecision — and he wasn't saying that he had, just _if_ — he never would have betrayed the Guardians, not even then. Even if he had joined up with Pitch, he wouldn't have- He couldn't-

Pitch was cursing and shouting as he scrambled to his feet and ducked a wild blast from Jack's staff. The wind was responding to Jack's swing in mood, swirling around them, keeping Pitch within a slowly diminishing circle. That was just fine for Jack. How dare he say that the Guardians were right to not trust him. It wasn't true. It wasn't and it was _so fucking unfair_ that they didn't care about him, even now.

It was starting to snow inside the vortex Jack created, creating a whiteout mixed with the howling of the wind. Dark sand was flying around as Pitch tried to form it into something that could stop Jack. It was a pointless attempt, with the whiteout preventing shadows and the wind tearing apart any nightmare sand that formed.

In fact, the only thing it was doing was giving Jack a target to pinpoint. He shot a blast toward where he thought Pitch was, and was rewarded with a muffled cry of pain. The smile on Jack's face hurt, felt foreign and unlike his usually happy grin.

"Isn't this _fun_?" he shouted into the wind, trusting it to carry his voice where it needed to go."Aren't we having a _good time_? I'm sure the Guardians would thank me for taking care of you once and for all; there are other ways to make fear in the world, you know."

The wind whispered in his ear, pushing him toward where Pitch was, making it easy for Jack to step in his path and shove the crook of his staff under Pitch's chin, forcing his head up. As the snow started to die down, Jack was able to see the damage he'd caused, frost clinging to Pitch's shoulder and his hands encased in ice. He felt pleased. He felt like he could do anything, and no one would be able to stop him, least of all Pitch.

"Then do it!" Pitch shouted above the wind. "Take out your revenge, Jack Frost. Show me what it really means to be a child of winter."

Jack took a deep breath, preparing to blast Pitch out of existence. He was going to do this. He was really going to do this. They'd find another way to get kids to remember their wonder and hope and everything. He tightened his grip on his staff and met Pitch's eyes steadily. Pitch looked-

He looked desperate and _scared_.

"Come on, Jack, you want to. I can see it in your eyes. You want blood, so _take it_." Pitch didn't look away, didn't try to protect himself or fight or do anything but goad Jack into destroying him. "They don't trust you and they never will. You're going to be alone for a long, long time, Jack. Eternity is, after all, forever."

With a scream of rage, Jack jerked the staff over just enough for the ice to miss Pitch's throat by a hair and let loose. Pitch stood, stock still, stiff and unyielding to the wind and ice and rage Jack was pouring out.

It was tempting to shift the staff the barest bit and redirect the ice at Pitch, but Jack resisted. If it was something Pitch wanted, he wasn't going to do it. His anger petered out and he slowed the barrage of ice, let the wind blow itself out. The snow settled as the wind calmed, leaving the ground around them blanketed in a good six inches. Around them was a sea of ice, rough and thick.

Pitch opened his mouth, probably to say something cutting, and Jack just couldn't deal with that. He didn't want the emptiness that had consumed him to be filled with Pitch's words.

"Do not," he said, baring his teeth at Pitch, "talk to me." He pointed toward the city, thankfully far enough away that no ice had reached it. "Go. Do your thing. I don't want to even look at you right now."

"Struck a nerve, did I?" Pitch said. Jack immediately shoved his staff back against Pitch's throat.

"I swear," he said. "If you don't go to that city right now, I'm taking you back to your lair and convincing the Guardians to let you rot there. For an eternity."

Pitch didn't look at all cowed, but after a moment of staring at Jack, his eyes promising death, he stepped backwards and walked away.

As soon as he was past the ice field, Jack started breathing heavily and dropped to the ground. He was fucking up. He couldn't do this. North never should have trusted him with so much responsibility.

He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and waited for Pitch to come back so they could move on to the next snow globe. He prayed that the Guardians would never find out about this. That they would never know how he lost it, how he _wanted_ to kill Pitch in cold blood. The emptiness was slowly being filled with a growing horror at himself; Jack would've preferred it stay empty over that.

He'd almost killed Pitch. What was wrong with him?


	7. In Which Maximum Fear is Extracted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this one took so long! I have no excuse other than laziness on my part. And accidentally getting into another fandom. :\ :\ :\ Rest assured, though, I am still wicked excited about this fic, and there is a long way to go before it's over. So, without further ado, I present: Chapter 7.

Jack wanted to go to North and tell him that he couldn't do it, that one of them would have to take on twice the work because Jack couldn't stand to be around Pitch. Not when it was so easy to push his buttons. Not when something in Pitch brought out the urge to hurt in him.

When Pitch had come back during the night, ready to move on, his hands were no longer encased in ice, but they were still an angry, raw-looking red. It made Jack almost pleased, and that scared him more than anything Pitch could ever say.

He called up the wind and went sailing to the North Pole. He managed to get all the way inside North's workshop before he started to doubt what he was doing. Could he really justify asking to be released from the only responsibility they'd asked of him? More importantly, could he really justify making them work more when they were all so busy already? Sandy and Tooth worked every night, and while Christmas was still a ways away, Jack knew that North started preparations as soon as the last one was over.

A heavy hand landed on Jack's shoulder, making him jump and twist away, bringing his staff to the ready for a fight.

North laughed, grinning cheerfully at Jack, and gestured to the workshop floor in front of them. "You have come to help in the workshop, yes?"

"Uh," Jack said. The yetis nearest him were giving him A Look, and he internally cringed. Yeah, definitely not. "Not exactly…"

"Ah, well, one day, I will get you. And then you will see how fun it is, to be a Christmas Guardian." North didn't look disappointed. If anything, he looked even jollier, his eyes sparkling and his grin widening.

"Sure," Jack said, nodding and pretending that that was ever going to happen.

"I know your tricks, Jack Frost." North said, pointing a finger at him. "You will not fool me. You do not have to help other Guardians with jobs, if you do not want to."

"No, it's not that," Jack protested. "I'm just distracted right now." It wasn't exactly a lie.

"During the summer, then. When it is too warm for you in the south." North nodded, looking out over the workshop instead of looking at Jack as he asked, "What brings you here this early in the spring? Did Pitch give you trouble? Are you needing us to-"

"No, nothing like that." Jack was surprised at the words that came out of his mouth, because that was the perfect out. He could say that Pitch was too much trouble and North would be understanding and let Jack back out gracefully and probably never bring it up again and it made Jack feel slightly sick that they cared but didn't.

"Then you are here just to visit! This is a good day, Jack. A very good day." North put a warm hand on his shoulder and started to guide him through the workshop to the stairs that would take them to the more comfortable second floor quarters.

Jack let himself enjoy the feeling of warmth and pressure on his shoulder for a slow count of ten, and then ducked out from under North's hand, stepping quick to get ahead of him and then turning around to walk backward so it didn't look like he was running away. Because he wasn't.

"There is still eggnog left from the party," North said, and Jack stopped himself from asking 'what party?' because he remembered. He had turned down the invitation, not wanting to intrude on what was a tradition with the Guardians where he would, once again, just feel awkward and out of place.

"I think I'll pass," Jack said, having never warmed up to the syrupy sweet taste of the drink. The breeze that had followed him through the workshop, sending yetis scrambling to stop paper and lighter tools and toys from blowing around, gave him a boost so he didn't trip over the stairs when he reached them. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," North said, his face earnest and open. "You can ask anything, Jack."

"Is it true," Jack said slowly, feeling out the words before he said them, "that Pitch-"

"Ah, so this surprise visit is about Pitch," North interrupted. Jack couldn't identify the emotion in his voice, but he knew it wasn't something good.

"No!" he was quick to exclaim. " I mean, yes. I mean… sort of?"

"I worried about this," North said, stopping in the middle of the highway, looking concerned in a way that had Jack's hackles raising. "You are so young, Jack, and Pitch is older than any of us. Probably, it is not true. Probably he is trying to manipulate you."

"Yeah," Jack said, deflating a little. "I just- is it true that you're only letting Pitch out four times a week?"

"Oh, yes, that one is true," North said, nodding. "We did not want to bother you, Jack. There are only four of us, and Sandy and Tooth are very busy all year."

Jack bit his lip and nodded a little. He wasn't sure that he liked the idea. As much as he hated Pitch, he couldn't imagine only feeling the fresh wind on his face four days a week. But Pitch was a thing that came from dark spaces and what was darker than under the ground? Probably it didn't bother him. Probably he was just trying to manipulate Jack, just like North said.

It made Jack tighten his jaw in frustration. He should tell North right then what Pitch had done, who cared if North was disappointed in him. Pitch shouldn't be able to get away with- with... 

Technically, though, he hadn't done anything. It was all on Jack for losing his temper. And Jack wasn't sure what North would think about that, not with the way his anger had been so big the ice field hadn't finished melting yet. So he kept his mouth shut.

"Are you certain you will not have eggnog?" North asked while he opened the door to a little sitting room and ushered Jack in. Jack took a seat while North opened a window to let the cool breeze come and go freely.

"Yeah," Jack said. "I don't need anything."

"None of us _need_ food and drink," North said, suddenly serious, his eyes piercing. "But it is pleasure, and pleasure is good."

"Maybe another time," Jack said, uneasy with the way North was looking at him. Jack was the guardian of fun, after all. He was all about pleasure. He didn't know what North was trying to get at, but whatever it was, it was wrong.

North sat in a comfortable-looking chair after pouring himself a glass of eggnog from a cabinet against the wall. "So, Jack," he said, waving his hand in the air. "Tell me about what you have been doing. What is happening in your life?"

Four hours later, Jack exited via the window, trusting the wind to catch him and get him safely to the ground. His cheeks were almost rosy with warmth, and his stomach was full of cookies the elves kept offering. He'd forgotten how good it felt to just _talk_ to someone.

He and North hadn't even talked about anything important. Besides Jack's question about Pitch at the very beginning, they hadn't talked about Guardian business at all. Instead of feeling like they were cutting him out of things, though, it felt like North was trying to include him in the non-Guardian parts of his life. It felt _good_.

He rode the high of that all the way back to the desolate tundra he was using as a home for the harsher, hotter months of the year.

The good feeling stayed up until the next time he was supposed to guard Pitch. A dread started growing in his stomach as he picked out a set of snow globes from North's ever-replenishing supply. It continued to grow while he paused on the workshop floor to look at a train that a yeti was building. And it continued to grow as he stepped outside and looked around for the perfect place to leave from.

He knew he was stalling, but each moment he delayed was one less moment he had tt spend around Pitch. It was one less moment where he was antagonized and verbally poked and prodded at until he exploded like last time. He bet the Guardians didn't have this sort of problem. They probably cowed Pitch into being quiet and just doing his job. He could make a vow that he wasn't going to have a repeat of last week, but he didn't know if he could stick to it.

Pitch always did seem to know how to get under his skin.

Okay. He wasn't going to let Pitch rile him up this time, he would be someone the Guardians would be proud of. He could do it. He let his determination burn the dread out of him before he opened a portal to Pitch's lair and stepped through.

Pitch was sitting on a throne, deep in the shadows. Jack could just make out the blurry edges of his form and the glow of his eyes in the dark. His arms were braced on his knees, his head in his hands as he started off into the distance blankly. For a split second, Jack thought that he looked lost; it gave him an unexpected tug in his heart.

Of course, Pitch noticed him almost as soon as he stepped through the portal, and the split-second was gone. Pitch's eyes focused on Jack and narrowed as he slowly rose to his feet and stalked forward.

"Ready?" Jack asked, more out of a false bravery than anything else. He had managed to forget how nerve-wracking it was to be in Pitch's presence.

"I must say, Jack," Pitch said instead. He stopped just a tad too close for Jack's comfort. "I didn't expect to see you again."

Pitch started to circle him. Jack tightened his grip on his staff, and got himself ready to spring into action if Pitch made the wrong move. So much for not letting him get under his skin.

"Really?" Jack asked, inwardly cursing the slight tremble in his voice. "This again? Do you really hate scaring kids so much that you'd rather stay down here than be up there?"

Pitch had come around full circle and smiled sickeningly at Jack. "But Jack, your fear tastes so sweet. Like-"

"Knock it off," Jack said. He made himself step forward, into Pitch's space. "Maybe I'm afraid, sure, but that doesn't mean I have to put up with your shit."

"How positively courageous." Pitch's voice rolled around the room, echoing back from the darkness.

Yeah, it made Jack's fear ratchet up a notch, but he wasn't impressed, not this time. "I'm not impressed," he said, scowling. "You're wasting time. Is it really that much fun trying to get a rise out of me that you'd rather do that than, I don't know, get out of your cage for a while and try to scare up some believers?"

Pitch hissed, but after a moment, he added an impatient, "Well?" and motioned to the snow globe in Jack's hand, like it was all his idea.

Jack could give him that minor, petty win. On the surface, Pitch immediately strode off toward the town. Jack trailed behind him, idly covering the ground with a frost that melted almost faster than he could create it. He was glad it was night, that there wasn't the light of the sun beating down on him as they wandered across middle America.

After a while of screwing around and only keeping half an eye on Pitch, Jack wandered closer. It wasn't that he wanted to be able to cause nightmares in kids — that was practically the opposite of creating fun — but he couldn't deny that he was curious.

Pitch's face was tight with concentration and what Jack thought might be frustration as nightmare sand snaked across the sky. Jack sat cross-legged on the wind and drifted closer, close enough to hear Pitch's muttered curse as a trail of sand dissolved before it hit any of the windows.

Shadows crept up the outside of a house, going for a bedroom window that still had the lights on. At the same time they started climbing up other houses while nightmare sand streamed. It was too much, though, and a whole section of shadows faltered and slid back down. Pitch let out a growl of what was definitely frustration and looked hatefully down at the manacles circling his wrists.

"I really thought you were better at this," slipped out of Jack before he could think better of it. The way Pitch's head jerked up and he narrowed his eyes had Jack continuing with, "I mean, you can't even scare a single town. That's kinda sad," just to get on his nerves.

"And am I to assume you would be able to create a blizzard without the wind to assist you?" Pitch asked, his jaw tight.

"Well, no," Jack said. "But that doesn't really compare. I could make blizzards before I had any believers. You can't even-" He gestured to where the shadows and sad had disappeared.

Pitch stared at him for a moment, long enough for Jack to start shifting his weight from foot to foot. As uncomfortable as he was with the scrutiny, Pitch didn't say anything about it, simply holding up his hands instead and saying, "What, exactly, do you think these are for?"

Jack looked at the manacles, then at Pitch's blank face, then at the manacles again. "I… don't really know."

For another long moment, Pitch didn't say anything, seeming to weigh his words before he spoke. When he did, the words were stiff like he didn't want to be saying them. "They throttle my power."

"So you're not at full power," Jack said, studying the hollows in Pitch's face and the dark circles under his eyes. The realization didn't give him as much pleasure as he thought it would. "Huh."

Pitch nodded when Jack didn't continue, a smile of pure malevolence on his face. "Huh, indeed." He turned away, dropping his hands in front of him again. "If you'll excuse me, I have some fear to visit upon the children of this wretched town."

He walked smoothly forward, almost looking like he was gliding across the ground. Jack followed, watching how Pitch's shoulders got more and more tense the further they walked into the town.

At each house, Pitch would stop in the shadows and seem to pull them toward him, collecting them in his hands. He shaped them into terrifying monsters and sent them crawling up the side of the house to the bedrooms. A little bit of nightmare sand followed it in, and then they waited. After a few minutes, a sobbing child's voice would scream out for their parents. It made Jack's skin crawl, and he had to fight down the urge to stop Pitch every time.

After a moment of standing there, breathing the air with hungry desperation, Pitch would move on and Jack would follow. It was amazing to watch Pitch work, in a kind of sick way. He never crafted the same shadow shape twice, always making something that Jack assumed was specific to the child. He hated to think it, but he couldn't help thinking that it was almost an art.

Almost. He wasn't that far gone.

"Is this how much you scare them all the time?" Jack asked after they'd made it through a quarter of the town.

Pitch didn't answer,.

"I mean," Jack said, moving closer with a thrill of adrenaline going through him, "maybe if you didn't scare kids the maximum amount every time, they'd let you do this more often."

Pitch made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort of disbelief.

'You never know," Jack continued, wandering closer while he talked. "I mean, there has to be ways to get good fear out of kids without sending them screaming, right? Have you tried that creepy fear you get when someone's staring at you? Oh! Or what about branches scratching on the glass! That always freaked Jamie out for a good long time. Or-"

Pitch whirled on him, making Jack flinch back. He hadn't realized he was standing so close to Pitch. "I have been doing this for literal millennia; _stop trying to help_ ," he hissed.

"Oh, and that helped you so much last time, right?" Jack said. Part of him knew that he was taking his life in his hands, but the rest of him, the louder part of him, wanted that taste of adrenaline and fear in the back of his throat that came with goading Pitch. Sure, Pitch had gotten under his skin when he was in the lair, but that didn't mean Jack couldn't get under his skin now. It was great revenge.

Something dark crossed Pitch's face, his features twisting for a second before smoothing out to a blank mask. "I know more ways to scare a person than there are words for snow in the world," he said, his voice rising with every word. "I don't need the help of a frost spirit barely old enough to-"

"Jeez," Jack said, interrupting him and holding up his hands and backing away. The fear he expected wasn't there, though. Riling Pitch up had almost been… _fun_. If his powers were diminished by the dream sand, there wasn't any need to worry. Jack could take him with his hands tied behind his back. "It was just a suggestion."

"I don't need your suggestions," Pitch sneered and turned away again. "Why don't you go do your usual _frolicking_ while I work."

"Hey!" Jack said, indignant. "It's called having fun, which isn't something you would know about anyway."

"Of course not," Pitch muttered, barely loud enough for Jack to hear him. Then he was moving on to the next house, leaving Jack scrambling to catch up and see what he made this time.

With a start, Jack realized that there were worse ways to spend his time. He shouldn't've been afraid of Pitch earlier. He was practically harmless at the moment. When Pitch wasn't purposefully picking at him to get under his skin, this was a bearable responsibility. If it continued like this it… wasn't impossible that it would turn into a fun one.

Just the thought had Jack's mind reeling. He would have never imagined Pitch's name and fun belonging in the same sentence, and yet, here he was. Antagonizing Pitch was _fun_.

Jack slowly started to grin as he followed Pitch.


	8. In Which Gaiety Is Had

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To my fellow USians: I'm so sorry, and while I know this is a poor offering, I hope it makes your day somewhat better.

Jack twirled his staff in one hand while he waited for Pitch to finish spreading fear throughout the final apartment building. It was early in the morning — nearly sunrise — and they'd been out for six hours. He should be sending Pitch back to his lair when he was done, but…

The thing was, the night hadn't been terrible. There was the required amount of sniping at each other, an argument over scaring people that almost escalated into a fight before Pitch clamped his mouth shut and walked off, and a surprising amount of just enjoyable companionship. It was unnerving in its own way.

Pitch didn't talk much, and Jack didn't want to give away anything that might compromise the Guardians or put the kids in real danger, so he mostly tried not to talk. Instead of crawling out of his skin with the need to do something, say something, he was surprised to realize he didn't mind following Pitch around and making sure he didn't do anything "too evil."

With a quiet huff of disbelief at himself, Jack rose up to the window that had suspiciously lengthening shadows. It was cracked open a bit, and Jack folded his arms on the sill like it was a ground floor window, and rested his chin on them.

He could be forgiven, he thought, for being so bored. Pitch was taking way longer on this apartment building than it was worth. They only had two hours left until dawn in the westernmost parts of the continent. And Jack had-

Well. Jack had done something dumb and all he could do was hope North didn't notice, or at least didn't realize it was him.

"Pitch," he called softly. "Pitch, come on, this is so boring and it's almost dawn."

A shadow crept up the wall across from the nightlight, slowly forming into a hunched figure with claws and teeth that were far too long. The kid in the bed — he looked like he was thirteen, at least, almost not a kid anymore — had his blankets over his head, but Jack could see him peeking occasionally before burrowing back down into them.

"Pitch," he said again. "Come on, you've wrung the city dry."

The shadow wavered for a moment, and Pitch hissed, "What do you think you're doing?" at Jack.

"Trying to tell you it's time to move on," Jack said. He could dangle the extra snow globe in front of Pitch like a carrot, but he kind of wanted to see Pitch's face when he just pulled it out. He was pretty sure Pitch wasn't someone that people did things for, and was pretty sure he, himself, was insane for even trying, but…

Last week and this night had been at least a little fun. And maybe, just maybe, he could convince Pitch to… not be good, of course, but to be less bad. To be someone the Guardians might consider letting free. Or letting be slightly more free.

Jack was definitely insane to even be thinking this, but every time he looked at Pitch's face, his stomach turned a little with the knowledge that they were starving him; maybe not on purpose, but all the same.

Still, when Pitch appeared in the shadows below him, Jack set down a safe distance away. He knew that Pitch's powers were barely usable with the dreamsand around his wrists, but he couldn't just stop being at least some level of wary.

"Time to put the monster back in its cage?" Pitch sneered, angry eyes glinting from the shadows.

"I could if you really wanted," Jack said, grinning as the adrenaline of doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing started to flow. He took the extra snow globe out of his pocket and shook it a little. "Or, we could go to one last place, and you can suck up all the fear you can make in-" he glanced up at the moon and then to the horizon -"two and a half hours."

A look of something close to pure astonishment flashed over Pitch's face before he said, stiffly, "How kind. And do the other Guardians know you're pointing me toward an extra set of helpless children?"

"Where'd be the fun in that?" Jack asked and shook the snow globe a little again, trying to tempt Pitch. "Time's wasting. You want to or not?"

Pitch was still watching him suspiciously. "You do realize that if the other Guardians find out what you're doing, it will be me they look to blame?"

Jack shrugged. He'd thought about that, yeah, but he was pretty sure he could convince the Guardians that it wasn't Pitch's idea or influence. Pretty sure. Like 70% sure. "That's why it's your choice."

After a long moment of silence where Pitch watched Jack, his eyes narrowed, he finally said, "I suppose," and stepped closer to Jack while Jack grinned and threw the snow globe to the ground.

Pitch stopped short when he stepped through the portal after Jack and cast a sidelong look Jack's way. Jack cast a semi-exasperated "What?" look back, because what was wrong now? He was trying to do something nice and Pitch was making it as hard as possible.

"This is a… rather large city," Pitch said, his words slow like they were carefully chosen.

Jack shrugged, because yeah, that was kind of the point. "I figured you'd be less cranky if you were getting more than crumbs."

Pitch was silent for long enough that Jack started to shift back and forth on his feet, wanting to move and get away from that gaze. He didn't like people looking at him like he was a… a puzzle they couldn't work out and a meal all rolled into one. It creeped him out.

Pitch's face twitched and he turned away at last. Jack followed him as he made his way through the city, following something that only he could sense. He finally stopped in the center of where the rich people lived and immediately started sending tendrils of nightmare strands through as many first floor windows as he could.

His back was tense, and tensed further when Jack scuffed a shoe against some gravel as he leaned on his staff. After a few moments — as the nightmare sand hit their intended targets, Jack assumed — Pitch started relaxing in small increments.

It was amazing to watch. Jack hadn't realized how tightly Pitch held himself all the time. He wasn't sure what was letting Pitch relax a little now, but he found himself wanting to figure out. Not to use it against him, but so he could do it again.

The thought unsettled him and he shook it out of his head.

For an hour, Jack followed Pitch around as he moved in the pools of shadow cast by the light of the streetlamps. For a while, Jack left little trails of frost in his wake, up the lampposts, on windows, over the bushes planted beside each stoop. It was too hot for anything to stay frozen for long, but that didn't stop him from making some creative patches of black ice.

He was interrupted in his doodling by a sudden wet nose shoved into his hand, making him gasp in surprise that quickly turned to delight. It wasn't often that dogs could see him, but it was like Christmas for him when they could.

"Hey boy," he said, a wide grin on his face. He ruffled the dog's dirty fur, fingers catching on a couple mats. It wasn't someone's pet, that was obvious, but he still murmured, "You all alone, too?"

The dog, which reminded him of the few dogs in his village back before he drowned, barked and ran around him in a circle, tail furiously wagging.

"You want to chase some snowballs?" he asked, already forming one that was denser than the ones he usually threw at kids. "Here, go fetch!"

The dog happily ran after the snowball, tail wagging all the while. It was confused when it tried to pick up its new toy and it fell apart, and pawed at the mess of snow on the ground until it was all melted. Then it turned and raced back to Jack.

"Aw, what a good boy," Jack said, running his hands through the dog's fur again. It was so nice just to be able to touch something. The dog turned its head to lick his wrists, tickling them and making Jack laugh. He formed another snowball and threw it down the sidewalk.

For a while, they played like that, until the dog was panting, its tongue lolling out. Jack threw a couple more snowballs, hoping the game wasn't over, but the dog ignored them, sitting at Jack's feet instead.

"What do you want, boy?" Jack asked, bending down and petting the dog again. Its fur wasn't silky smooth or anything, but it was a living creature that he could feel, that didn't mind his cold hands, that didn't mind him touching.

Pitch was probably going to be cruel about this, he knew. He was just giving him more ammunition, but it was worth it for the way the dog was leaning against his legs, warming them almost to the point of being uncomfortable. He looked up to see where Pitch was, only to realize with horror rapidly setting in that he was gone.

Fuck. He'd lost Pitch. The Guardians were never going to forgive him for this. He'd ruined things, getting distracted by the dog. This was why they hadn't asked him to help. This was why he was apart from them, always a little too irresponsible to be taken seriously.

He whirled in a circle, trying to figure out where Pitch had gone. There wasn't any sign of him, though, not even in the dark alleyway directly across from Jack. The Guardians were going to kill him.

"Pitch?" he called, like he'd actually get an answer. But there was nothing but the sound of birds in the trees beginning to wake up.

He began to walk down the street in the direction he'd last seen Pitch going, dragging his footsteps a little. The dog followed beside him. He wondered how long it would take the Guardians to realize what happened, if he would get the time to go back and try to explain… Explain what? There was nothing to-

The dog barked at a shape coming out of the shadows up ahead and took off toward it. Jack stared for a second, relief filling him and squashing the rising tide of fear he'd been feeling. The dog was barreling straight toward Pitch, who tried to step to the side. He wasn't fast enough, though, and the dog jumped up, its front paws landing hard on Pitch's chest.

Jack barely had time to glimpse the look of utter shock and bewilderment on Pitch's face before the dog had knocked him over and was licking his face and wagging its tail so fast it was almost a blur.

"Get off!" Pitch sputtered, pushing at the dog, but it was determined and, apparently, extremely friendly.

Jack started to laugh, his giggle just the tiniest bit hysterical. It was as much from the relief of Pitch being there instead of running continents away as it was from watching the dog completely incapacitate him.

Pitch was still sputtering on the ground, sending Jack into fresh gales of laughter. The great Nightmare King, undone by a stray dog. Every time he thought he was going to stop laughing, he'd look over at Pitch and start snickering again.

It didn't actually take Pitch long to get the dog off of him and he was back on his feet quickly. But there were muddy footprints on the front of his robes and Jack could just imagine how grimy the back of them looked from being ground into the pavement.

Pitch was eyeing him, looking murderous, his hands clenched into fists, unable to hide them in the shadows of his robes. The realization that that wasn't something he was supposed to see, that Pitch could be wanting to kill him because of the dog — which was still standing next to Pitch, staring and wagging its tail — but… But he could also be wanting to kill him because he'd laughed. The thought did nothing to sober him up, though.

When the laughter had trickle down to just occasional hiccuping giggles, he whistled for the dog. It came bounding over to him, and he bent down and roughly scratched behind its ears.

"Good boy," he said. When he looked up at Pitch from his bent-over position, the anger in Pitch's eyes had only grown. "You better run, now, before Pitch tries to kill you."

He gave the dog a shove away from him, away from Pitch, but it thought it was another game, a game it was happy to play, and came back every time Jack shoved it. Finally, Jack sighed in defeat through his grin and straightened.

When he looked over, Pitch was still standing in the same spot. Jack almost started snickering again, the image of Pitch's shocked face as he fell backwards appearing, but he held it back. He could be nice, or at least try to calm Pitch's anger down.

"Are you quite finished?" Pitch asked, his voice as stiff as his posture, before Jack could open his mouth.

Jack looked down at the dog and smiled a little; it was always bittersweet when animals could see him, and he'd never figured out what the difference was between those that could and those that couldn't. But his life wasn't stable enough for anything that could be considered a pet, not with him moving around the globe all the time. Not with him not having a permanent place to call home.

"Yeah," he said, looking up again. "Yeah, I guess. Is it that close to dawn?"

Pitch looked disgusted at his question and pointedly stared at the horizon.

"Yeah, I guess so," Jack said, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. The way Pitch was staring at him, so much hate and anger in his eyes, was making him uncomfortable. He avoided Pitch's gaze and bent down to pet the dog one last time, taking a moment to memorize the feel of rough fur and heat under his hand before straightening up for the last time. "See you later, boy."

He took the last snow globe out of his pocket, and threw it down. Pitch broke the stare and moved swiftly to the portal. Before Jack could say anything — what he was going to say, he didn't know — Pitch was gone.

That was okay, though. He called the wind and it came willingly, rustling through the bushes and lifting him up to take him North. He didn't look below him to see if the dog was trying to follow.


	9. In Which Hard Truths Are Told

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um remember that time I disappeared for a while because Real Life™ got too stressful? I have nothing I can say in my defense because I'm in the middle of writing chapter 16, so it's not like there's not a whole baglog of chapters I coulda been posting. So, sorry, my b.

Pitch didn't look happy to see him, the next week. Well. More unhappy than usual. He didn't even try to scare Jack from the shadows; he was perfectly silent. They usually didn't talk much, but the silence this time was heavy, like it was more than that.

He lasted one whole snow globe before he had to ask. "Are you mad at me? Because the silent treatment is really childish if you are." It was the only explanation he could think of.

Pitch sent him a scathing look, and said, mildly, "Whyever would I be angry with you, Jack?"

"I don't know," Jack said, trying to keep his cool and not get frustrated. At least he knew that the answer was yes to the first question, though. "That's why I'm asking."

Pitch turned back to where he was orchestrating a tiny shadow army to slowly move across the window he was in front of. "I meant," he said evenly, "why would I care for you enough to be angry about anything?"

The rhetorical question struck Jack at his core. Pitch was angry, he could see that now, but he was right. It probably wasn't about Jack. He could be so stupid sometimes, so he withdrew so that Pitch didn't realize how much that had hurt.

Judging from the barest of upturned lips, Pitch knew anyway.

"Fine," Jack said. "If you don't want to talk about it, don't." It was stupid to expect Pitch to want to talk about anything with him. No matter the almost friendly tone to their last meeting, and the way the one before that hadn't been terrible. It was foolish to think Pitch was warming up to him.

He wandered off, keeping Pitch within his view but far enough away that it felt semi-private. Jack crouched on the top of his staff, watching the people scurrying to and fro through the wet spring warmth. There weren't many of them, not at this time of night, but they were entertaining enough to keep him from being completely bored.

He tried to strike up a conversation multiple times, only to be met with stony silence every time. He just wished he knew what he'd done. Pitch wasn't even going to give him a hint, and without one, how was Jack supposed to figure out what he needed to apologize for?

If he even wanted to apologize. Because what did it matter if _Pitch Black_ was mad at him? Of all the people Jack had made angry, this one was sticking in his throat the most. At least those other times had been mostly intentional, and it had been obvious what the spirit took offense to in the aftermath on those few where it wasn't. But with Pitch…

He kept playing the night back through his mind, again and again. Everything had been fine, almost friendly, until Jack got distracted by the dog. Maybe Pitch didn't like dogs? And was angry Jack had let it jump on him? But that wasn't fair at all; it wasn't like Jack could control the dog. It wasn't even his dog!

He blew out a frustrated breath, accidentally icing the budding leaves of the tree branch he was sitting on. This was ridiculous. He didn't care and it wasn't like he was going to be back next week. Easter was on the coming Sunday. Bunny would be done with his egg painting by next Wednesday.

He managed to stew in his anger all the way through the different stops until Pitch was done with his last and had come back to stand by Jack, staring into the distance and clearly waiting for Jack to give him his portal home.

The manacles caught Jack's eye, though, and something softened within him. Maybe Pitch was just angry at having to be chained up almost every night. If it were Jack, he would be furious about that and wouldn't let them put the manacles on him at all.

"How does Sandy get those on you every time?" he asked before he could think better of it, nodding to the dreamsand. "I mean, how long are you waiting around with those on before I show up? How does Sandy even find the time to put them on and take them off? There has to be an easier way to-"

He stopped short when he realized Pitch was shaking. It only took a second for him to realize he was shaking because he was silently laughing.

"What?" Jack asked. When Pitch didn't seem like he was going to answer, Jack repeated, " _What_?"

After a moment, Pitch turned to look at him, smiling with too many teeth. "You think these come off?" He laughed again, this time a harsh bark of sound that didn't sound happy. "How… precious."

"Of course they come off," Jack said, frowning. "They wouldn't-"

"Ah, yes," Pitch said, turning away again, looking like he'd lost all interest in the conversation. "And here we are, back to how well you think you know your friends. I have to say, I'm getting tired of your argument."

"But I do know them," Jack said. He clenched his teeth for a moment, not wanting to give Pitch the satisfaction of seeing that he was getting to him so easily. "They wouldn't do something like this."

"Something like what?" Pitch asked. He slowly turned his head until his eyes met Jack's and then just watched. An uncomfortable twisting was growing in his gut.

"Like- Like, you know," he started, before falling silent.

Pitch tsked and shook his head in mock sadness. "You can't even say it, can you? You can't say what you Guardians are doing."

"That's because they're not doing anything!" Jack said. Frost was starting to creep up his staff from where his hand gripped it. "They wouldn't just… lock you up and throw away the key."

"Isn't that exactly what they did, though?" Pitch asked. "After locking me in my home for half a decade, is it really such a shock that when they allowed me out of there they would restrict my movements in some other way?"

"They wouldn't," Jack said stubbornly. He just couldn't picture it. Sandy fashioning the loops of dreamsand and tightening them on Pitch's wrists before leaving? North taking satisfaction from knowing Pitch was still chained just as much as he'd taken satisfaction from knowing that the kids were safe from Pitch's influence? Tooth and Bunny and- and himself just going along with it?

But they wouldn't do that.

"But they did, Jack," Pitch said, taking a step closer to him. "They knew what they were doing when they decided to put these on me."

Jack shook his head against the idea, panic bubbling up from his stomach and starting to grip his throat. "They wouldn't. They wouldn't make anyone live in chains all the time, they're not like that."

"Oh, they're not like that, are they?" Pitch was in his space now, just over the edge of what was comfortable. He stopped and lifted his hands, letting Jack get a good look of the shifting gold surrounding his wrists.

Jack couldn't tear his eyes away from the movement, from the slight red around the edges of where the manacles sat, the way they shifted and dragged like they had weight to them. Like they were solid and real.

"They wouldn't," Jack said and repeated it for emphasis, his voice rising. One of his hands was shaking. "They wouldn't."

"Is that so?" Pitch asked. "You're so confident but so, so frightened that I'm not lying. I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you there. I am indeed telling the truth."

"You're not." Jack could feel his blood pounding, racing through his veins at the speed of a living human's heartbeat.

"And how are you so sure?" Pitch asked, leaning forward a little. His voice oozed with mockery. "How are you so. Very. Sure?"

"Because they're _good_ ," tore out of Jack's throat. "They're good, and good people don't do that. It doesn't matter that you're evil-" Pinch straightened and scowled "-because they're good and good people are- They don't-" He vaguely noticed that he was breathing hard, that his thoughts were racing and he couldn't form a complete sentence.

"Oh, Jack," Pitch said, falsely tender. "Your friends are good, but they're not _nice_." He hissed the last word as he stepped back, the pressure of his presence easing.

Jack gulped in air. He abruptly remembered that holidays, much like the seasons, could be cruel too. Their cruelty was the careless cruelty of children protecting their friends, either too young to understand that other people had feelings or too old to care.

"They wouldn't," he said anyway, his voice shaking, denying it like this time would be the magic denial that would break the spell. It didn't, though, and in desperation, he said, "You need to leave," and opened the portal to Pitch's lair.

Pitch smiled at Jack, his teeth sharp. He glided forward across the neatly tended grass. "Just remember," he said before disappearing through the portal, "An unwitting accomplice still carries some blame."

With that last parting shot, he was gone, and Jack was free to sink to the ground and try to force the entire conversation out of his head.


	10. In Which Jack Regrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm gonna try to stick to a Monday night update schedule, so all y'all get fic on the worst day of the week. Sound good? Cool.

Jack was glad that Bunny was done with Easter and was taking over again — with a totally unnecessary "good work not ending the world, kid" — because after that last confrontation, Jack didn't know if he could face Pitch again.

Pitch was wrong. Jack knew that deep in his bones. The Guardians may not be nice, may be accidentally cruel at times, but they would never intentionally hurt someone. Not even their worst enemy. Pitch had to be lying. If Jack were unsure about it, he could just bring it up with North and North would tell him that everything was okay. But he didn't need to because he knew that the Guardians wouldn't do that.

The righteous anger fueling him lasted all through the spring and well into the summer. It wasn't until the leaves began to turn and Jack had been left alone up north for half a year that he could admit that he might, just maybe, miss Pitch a little. There had been times in there when it hadn't been bad, being around him.

It was just the loneliness talking, though. Jack knew that. It wasn't really Pitch he missed, it was having one day a week where he knew that someone would be able to see him, would talk to him, would prove that he existed. Even if that someone was a giant jerk like Pitch, he was better than nothing.

Sometimes, Jack would start thinking about that dog jumping on Pitch, and he would catch himself smiling. Those were the times he found himself trying to visit the other Guardians and just getting in their way most of the time.

At least Pitch never acted like he was being inconvenienced by having Jack around. Sure, he didn't want Jack there, but it wasn't personal. He would have felt that way about anyone. Somehow, that was less hurtful than being kindly kicked out of each Guardian's home because they had to work and he was a distraction.

He could never tell the other Guardians about how empty he felt so much of the time. That just… couldn't ever happen. But he _could_ offer to take Pitch off their hands sometimes, and maybe that would fill the emptiness with at least a little bit of warmth. And, after all, both Sandy and Tooth worked every night. Surely, one — or both — of them would want a break.

Because North was the one in charge of all things Pitch, Jack went straight to him. He paused on a balcony overlooking the workshop, watching all the yeti and elves as they worked, and wondered what it would be like to be surrounded by people all day, every day.

Jack was believed in, but beyond Burgess, the kids were more spread out and their number was growing smaller every winter. Soon, he would be right back where he started. The thought made him shiver, fear escaping for a moment to crawl up his spine before he could squash it down again under the weight of everything else.

Jack jumped, jerking forward and nearly going over the railing when a large hand clapped his back. North really needed to stop sneaking up on him when he was lost in thought. Jack turned to see him standing a few feet away, grinning, his cheeks rosy and eyes sparkling like usual. It must take so much energy to be that happy all the time; Jack couldn't imagine it.

"Come for a visit, have you, Jack? You must come more often!" North said. Jack didn't point out that he'd come for a visit months ago and been kicked out after annoying the yeti too much and making an elf cry (accidentally).

"Actually," he said instead, "I have an offer for you."

"An offer." North's eyes were shining with mirth. "Come, let us go sit and drink, and you will tell me about this offer."

Jack was led to one of the rooms above the workshop — not the same one he'd been in when he'd asked North about Pitch the last time — and ushered into a comfortable chair. North had a mug of cold hot chocolate for him almost instantly, like he'd known Jack would be coming.

They chatted for a few minutes, Jack asking about the toys the yetis were making and North asking him about how he spent his summer. But it wasn't long before North leaned forward, the amber liquid in his glass catching the light just right to make it look like it was glowing.

"So, this offer," North said, and Jack was suddenly nervous.

"Yeah," he said and swallowed hard. "I know that Sandy and Tooth are busy every night, and you and Bunny have your holidays. I was thinking…" he drifted off for a second, his eyes focused on the glass in North's hand.

After a moment of silence, North prompted, "You were thinking?"

Jack forced himself to look up and meet North's eyes. "I was thinking that it wasn't fair to have the Guardians who work the most have to spend all this time on Pitch while I just-" he forced the next words out despite the way they stuck in his throat "'-goof off in the snow. I thought I could take over for one of them."

Jack say immediately that North wasn't going to be won over without an argument. So he hurried on to add, "I know that I'm not your first pick, but nothing bad happened when I was taking over for Bunny, right?"

"Snow globe did go missing," North said, and Jack flinched.

"It was an experiment," he said, more firmly than he actually felt. "A failed experiment."

"Ah," North said. "Jack, you are young. And you are not..." he paused. Jack knew what was coming and felt something sick turn over in his gut that after all this time, no one knew better than that. "You are not person who wants responsibilities. You are person of fun! Which is needed in this world. But maybe not in this moment."

Jack clenched his jaw. It was a hard thing to argue with, because North wasn't wrong. He didn't want responsibilities, didn't want to have to stop making (and having) fun. But not wanting responsibilities in general didn't mean he couldn't want this one specifically. He could do this, was the thing. It was something _fun_ , in a scary way, that he could do to help the Guardians. If they let him.

"Isn't Sandy getting tired?" Jack asked. He didn't have to sleep as often as a human, but he still needed to occasionally. Sandy couldn't be all that much different, right? "It's always nighttime somewhere, right?"

"That is good point," North said, nodding slowly. "Sandy could use break. But Jack, this is important. Are you sure is something you want to do? Pitch is... Pitch is formidable opponent, and very good at manipulation."

With a cocky grin pasted on his face, Jack said, "He hasn't managed to get me yet."

North didn't look so sure, though. "Shadows can be persuasive. You will have to be on your guard at all times."

"I know," Jack said, meeting North's eyes to convince him just how seriously he took it. "I won't mess it up. You'll see."

"Of that, I have no doubt," North said, a gentle smile on his face. "Perhaps you should take bag of snow globes home so you will not be having to come back every week."

"Of course," Jack said. He didn't really want to be forced to travel back and forth between the North Pole and North America, and it was logical to take with him a bag of snow globes. It just...

How it made him feel wasn't the important thing. What was, was making sure he didn't mess it up. So he followed North to the room the snow globes were in, listening to him chat amiably about where it would be good to send Pitch.

"Belief is fading in eastern parts of Russia," he was saying as he opened the door to the little room. "Probably, you will need to start there. I will be contacting you if new holes in belief open, yes?"

In other words, don't call me, I'll call you.

"Okay," Jack said and took the proffered sack. He slowly started filling it with snow globes, trying to keep the ratio between snow globes to Pitch's lair and snow globes out of it right. There had to be a better way to get and return him.

"Hey, North," he said, looking back over his shoulder to where North was standing in the doorway. "Isn't there an easier way to do this? I mean, it takes a lot of snow globes just to do one week. How are you making them so fast?"

North put a finger to the side of his nose and winked before saying, "I must go now. The elves will be getting in trouble without someone watching." He sobered and put a hand on Jack's shoulder. "We are missing you, Jack. It is not good to be so alone."

"I have the kids to play with," Jack protested. He wasn't really alone; even when they couldn't see him, he was never _alone_ alone. His loneliness was just... it wasn't a fair thing. It didn't listen to reason, so how could he expect it to go away if he wasn't alone in the way North meant?

"It is not same," North said with a reproving look, like Jack should know better. "One month," he continued, holding out a single finger. "One month, you come here."

"I don't need to be checked up on," Jack said, looking at his feet. He could be responsible, hadn't he already showed them that when he took over for Bunny?

When he looked back up, North was looking at him with so much sadness in his eyes that Jack bristled. He didn't need pity, and North didn't help when he said, "It is not for checking up on your, Jack. It is for meeting as friends, with the rest of Guardians and myself."

"Thank you," Jack said, his voice clipped. He didn't want to come back until he absolutely had to, not with North looking at him like that. "I'll be back."

"One month," North reminded him. A loud clattering came from the direction of the workshop and North swore in Russian. "I must be going. Don't forget!"

With those words, Jack was alone. He hastily shoved a few more snow globes in the sack -- it was getting heavy -- and left as quietly as he could to go back to where he was living at the moment.

The ride on the wind back to North America should have been a quiet time to dance with the wind and enjoy the feeling of it rushing over him. Instead, he was barely halfway across the ocean when Sandy found him.

"You heard?" he asked, touching down on the golden cloud that should have been ripped apart by the wind, at the speed Jack was going. As soon as he was safely sitting in front of Sandy, one hand on his staff, the other clutching the rattling bag of snow globes, the cloud of dreamsand started to slow down.

A check mark appeared above Sandy's head. That was a yes, then, he had heard. Jack couldn't tell if he was happy or angry, though, and the flashing symbols above his head didn't give anything away.

_I'm worried for you, Jack. Pitch is dangerous._

"I know he's dangerous," Jack said, "and I'll be careful. But... I can't just sit around and do nothing anymore. It's not fair to you guys."

_What about what's fair to you?_ Sandy looked genuinely concerned, but Jack just shook his head.

"Are you mad?" he asked instead of responding to that. Sandy gave him a look that said that he knew that Jack was avoiding the question, but didn't press it.

For a moment, Sandy didn't respond, and Jack was worried he was going to have to apologize. But then Sandy shook his head slightly, a faint smile on his face, and hugged Jack tight. Much tighter than Jack would've expected from such a small person.

The hug was over far too soon for Jack's tastes, but he couldn't find an excuse to prolong it. He found himself wrapping his arms around himself when Sandy stepped away. It wasn't as good as a hug from another person, but it made him feel slightly less empty.

When he noticed Sandy looking at him with concern, he quickly dropped his arms. "It'll be okay," he said. Sandy nodded, which filled Jack with relief. At least someone approved.

Another set of symbols flashed over Sandy's head, almost too fast for Jack to catch. Sandy still had to talk more slowly for Jack, even after half a century, but Jack was steadily getting faster at figuring out what Sandy meant and translating it in his head.

"A sachet of dreamsand for protection?" he asked, his brow furrowed a little. "How would that-"

_Release it, and the sand will protect you and summon me,_ Sandy interrupted. He produced a small pouch from somewhere and scooped up a handful of sand from right next to where he was sitting. He let it pour through his fist into the pouch, then handed the pouch to Jack. _Keep it on you, always._

"Thank you," Jack said. Part of him wanted to be insulted that they didn't think he could take care of himself, even though he'd been a big part of why Pitch was defeated in the first place. The rest of him glowed warmly at the idea that someone would come for him if he needed help, that he didn't need to do this one thing completely alone.

"Thanks," he said again, his throat tight.

_You're welcome,_ Sandy said. Then he made a shooing motion, smiling at Jack in a way that took the sting out of the gesture.

The last thing Jack saw before the wind zipped him away was Sandy's _be careful!_ He would, was the thing. He didn't want to die, and didn't want to release Pitch on an unsuspecting world -- or even one that was suspecting it. He just wanted to help, and between North and Sandy, he got to. It was a good feeling.

Sandy was on Sunday nights, which made Jack glad. Kids had to go in early because it was a school night, so he wouldn't miss having fun with them. And after two nights of being able to bring them fun well into the night, it would distract him from how they all had a home to go to and he had... a tree branch, if he was lucky and there was a forest nearby.

Sunday night wasn't far away, and Jack felt himself getting almost excited to be using the snow globe to transport to Pitch's lair. There was a heavy silence in the air for a few moments after he stepped out of the portal. It quickly lightened to the regular silence he associated with forests a predator had just walked through, and Pitch's lair.

"Changed your mind, have you?" The voice came from directly behind him, making him jump. He slowly turned around, but there was no one there. This again. "Come to beg forgiveness and ask me to-"

"No," Jack said, turning once again to where it seemed like the voice was coming from. He felt a wave of fear crest through him, and along with it, frustration that Pitch couldn't just make this easy and incredulous, almost hysterical, amusement that Pitch thought he might still be willing to join him.

The silence that followed was the most offended silence Jack had ever heard. His fingers drummed on his staff as he waited for Pitch to come out of the shadows. When it didn't seem like that was going to happen without prompting, he said, "Any day now, Pitch. Unless you want to stay here all night."

There was another long moment of offended silence before Pitch slid out of the shadows to Jack's side.

"And to what do I owe the pleasure?" Pitch asked, his voice oily and dripping with sarcasm.

"I'm taking over for Sandy," Jack said, his fingers still drumming on his staff with nervousness. "So get used to it."

A sharp bark of laughter escaped Pitch as he turned away. "The old man got tired, then? And they replaced him with _you_ of all people?"

Jack narrowed his eyes and strongly considered sending a blast of ice Pitch's way while he wasn't looking. In the end, he decided it would just tire him out and make Pitch mock him instead of accomplishing anything. Not worth it.

"I figured Sandy had to be running himself ragged, so I asked," he said.

That seemed to stop Pitch, the mocking laughter getting caught in his throat. "You _asked_?" he said, the incredulity in his voice too sharp to be faked. "And you couldn't ask to replace that disgustingly cheerful rabbit?"

There was something in his voice, buried under all of the exasperation and sarcasm and hatred. Something that had the little hairs on the back of Jack's neck rising. Something that Jack didn't want to recognize, even though he'd heard it a hundred times from kids on the playground.

He was suddenly nervous. Not healthily scared, like he should be, but _nervous_. For Pitch. Wonders would never-

Pitch whirled around before Jack could complete the thought, staring at Jack with blatant confusion in his eyes, before he turned again, slower this time. Jack wasn't sure what he was staring at out across the dark cavern, but it had to be something good. And probably something only Pitch could see, with Jack's luck.

Still, he stepped up until he was almost brushing shoulders with Pitch -- it was stupid to get that close, but at the moment, he wasn't worried. Not with that broken down emotion in Pitch's voice.

"I-" Jack started, but had to clear his throat. "I could go back and ask to replace Bunny, instead?"

There was nothing in the darkness that Jack could see, no matter how intently Pitch stared out into it. At Jack's words, Pitch let out another bark of laughter before clamping his mouth shut so hard Jack heard his teeth click together.

"You think the other Guardians would listen to your request?" he asked. Jack cocked his head, unsure of where Pitch was going with this, just knowing he wouldn't like it. "The flightiest of the Guardians, too wrapped up in fun to be given any responsibility, getting bored again?"

"That's not how they'd-" Jack protested, but fell silent, anger rising in him, when Pitch continued over him.

"Oh yes it is," Pitch hissed. "And you know that. They would look at you with pity in their eyes and tell you it was okay. You couldn't be expected to work hard like them. It just wasn't in your nature."

The anger in Jack was growing. Logically, he knew that Pitch was just reading his fears and playing them up, but they rang so true to him. Of course they did, they were _his_ , and Pitch was just amplifying them by saying them out loud. It didn't mean they were true.

"Clearly," Jack ground out, "it was a moment of insanity when I thought that I was missing you." Pitch stiffened beside him with a tiny intake of breath, and Jack really wanted to know what was so interesting out in the dark. "This was a mistake."

He expected some sort of retort from Pitch about how stupid Jack was for his moment of almost vulnerability. Instead, Pitch was silent for a long, long time. Jack was about to just leave when Pitch slowly turned to him, his face blank.

"While all of this is absolutely fascinating," he said, "I would like to be able to instill fear in the hearts of the lovely children at those locations." He gestured to the lump of snow globes in Jack's hoodie pocket and added, his voice soft like velvet in a way that made Jack nervous, "If that is, of course, alright with you."

"Right..." Jack said. He stepped back from Pitch and dug out the four tiny snow globes that would take them across the world. "Where are we going first?"

With the briefest brush of barely warm fingers across Jack's own fingers, Pitch took one of the snow globes and tossed it ahead of them, the portal sparking and opening. "I believe this shall suffice."


	11. In Which Jack Realizes Kindness Isn't Absolute

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhhhhh probably no one should ever trust me when I say a chapter is definitely coming at a specified time/day. It's not that I'm lying, it's just that I'm crazypants and sometimes that is more overwhelming than the idea of letting you guys down. So, you know, maybe another chapter next week, I guess.

They fell into something of a rhythm. Jack got Pitch once a week, then entertained himself while Pitch did his thing. Sometimes Jack got bored and tried to get Pitch to talk to him, but it was like trying to get a brick wall to talk back.

Jack started collecting conversation topics that Pitch would tolerate briefly instead of immediately shut down. Okay: the hilarious face that kid made when he realized the boogieman was under his bed. Not okay: anything about what Pitch did before the Guardians defeated him.

The "Okay" list slowly grew. Pitch was willing to listen to Jack talk about sending kids careening down an iced over sled track, but he wasn't willing to listen to Jack talking about snowball fights. It was a weird distinction to make, but Jack didn't pretend to know what was going on inside Pitch's head.

Halloween was an okay subject that almost got Pitch to respond. Most other holidays — even the ones that weren't Christmas and Easter — were met with a snarl to leave him alone and Jack left scrambling to catch up while Pitch strode away.

He was wearing Pitch down, though; he could see it in the way Pitch would take longer and longer to snap at him, in the way his eyes kept flicking over to Jack when Jack was talking, in the way Jack was almost sure he was listening instead of ignoring Jack as hard as he could.

"What're you making?" Jack asked from where he hung upside down off a tree branch and watched Pitch 

It wasn't that he wanted to be friends with Pitch — that was stupid and reckless — but he wanted to be at least a little entertained if he was going to give up a full night to babysitting Pitch. Like he actually needed babysitting, held back by dreamsand as he was.

Pitch's eyes flicked to him so fast Jack almost missed it, but he didn't respond. The amorphous blob of shadow that was making its way down the street from apartment building to apartment building didn't look like anything particularly scary. Occasionally, pieces would break off of it and go slithering into a window, but for the most part, it just looked like a blob of shadow to Jack.

"Seriously," Jack said, swinging himself up to lay across the branch, staff dangling from one hand. "What's it supposed to be? Are you even trying anymore?"

This time, he could see PItch gritting his teeth. Instead of saying anything, he continued working his way down the street. The trees placed evenly along the sidewalk were too far apart for Jack to easily jump from one to the other, so he hopped down every time Pitch got too far away to bother.

It was getting frustrating. Needling Pitch had started out fun, because Pitch would snap back. It was fun like staring down a bear while wandering through the woods. You could get mauled, but it was just as likely the bear would move on.

"Is it the Blob?" Jack asked, jumping up into the tree next to Pitch and crouching there, the grip of his toes the only thing keeping him from falling. "Because I don't think that's as scary as it was in the 50s. Kids are made of stronger stuff now."

It didn't take much to wind Pitch up to the point that he was grinding his teeth together, just like he was doing now. A few well-placed comments, at least two of which implied he was bad at scaring kids, and Jack could almost feel the rage rolling off of him.

But he just. Stopped there. Wouldn't continue into a fight. Sometimes, Jack felt like he was poking a bear with a stick, but the bear was in a cage and couldn't get to Jack, no matter how angry he made it. It wasn't exactly a comfortable feeling, but he just couldn't help himself. The danger was _fun_.

Pitch had gotten too many trees ahead again, so Jack rolled off his branch and caught up once more.

"I mean, are you losing your touch? Is that part of what happens when you get all-" he gestured to Pitch's sharp cheekbones and the hollows under his eyes "-skeletony?"

This time, Pitch did whirl on him, and spat out, "Did your ability to keep your mouth shut leave you behind at the same time your sister did?"

Jack flinched back like he'd been struck. Not fun anymore, not fun anymore! "That wasn't necessary," he said.

Pitch smiled in a way that just highlighted how little fear he was creating during the week. "Oh, but it was, Jack. In fact, I think-"

He bit off the words suddenly, and turned away from Jack. It was like a door had slammed on the conversation, but Jack wasn't sure why. He was spoiling for a fight, he knew, and it wasn't reasonable, but Pitch had been so damn... 

So damn what? That was kind of the problem. He wasn't _anything_ ; he was like a hollow shell of what Jack remembered him to be. Even after the Guardians had defeated him and then decided to allow him a little taste of freedom — freedom of a kind — he had still had some fight left to him. Something to keep Jack entertained while they wandered through cities.

This wasn't fun anymore.

He lagged behind a little as Pitch moved to a cross street and turned onto a main road. Pitch was perfectly willing to cut Jack down when he was subbing in for Tooth and Bunny. Why was this so different?

He scrambled to catch up with Pitch and fell into step beside him as well as he could. "What is your problem?"

Pitch's gaze slid sideways toward him before it snapped back to the mess of shadows in front of him. He didn't say anything.

"You can't ignore me forever," Jack said, even though he wasn't too sure about that.

From Pitch's stony silence, it was clear that he thought he could. But Jack had centuries of perfecting the art of annoying people into talking to him. Even if that talking was a simple "go away."

He didn't know Pitch well enough to know what would get him riled up, even though he had some guesses from his previous attempts at conversation. But he did know what made most people pissed enough to pay attention to him, so he focused on that.

"Is it because you can't concentrate on scaring kids and fighting with me?" he asked. He couldn't just stand there while Pitch angrily sent shadows racing up the walls and through the edges of the light cast by the streetlights.

"I get that," Jack continued, sarcasm and fake concern seeping into his voice. "It must be so hard making a big blob of shadow."

Pitch just moved onto another house, refusing to even glance Jack's way, but Jack could tell he was getting to him already. His shoulders were tight and creeping upwards.

"You should relax a little," Jack said, standing just outside of arm's reach. "All that tension can't be good for your back."

Not surprisingly, that didn't make Pitch relax at all. If he kept clenching his teeth like that something was going to crack. After a moment of hesitation, running through his options, Jack zipped in front of Pitch, again just out of arm's reach.

"Is it because you're so weak?" Jack asked, standing lightly on the balls of his feet so he could dodge. "What, you have no power right now so you're afraid I'll-" He bit off his words as Pitch finally looked at him. The pure hatred in his eyes had Jack's resolve weakening and he faltered back a step.

"Say what you will, Guardian," he spat. "You won't trap me with this. I've put up with far worse for far longer than you've existed."

"What?" Jack asked, confused, and he took another step back when the hatred intensified. "What trap? What are you talking about?"

"I think you know," Pitch said. He didn't step toward Jack at wall, but Jack still felt himself wanting to step back once again. "I've put up with far worse than your juvenile attempts at antagonizing me. If you think I'm going to get thrown back into that pit-" he spit the world "-for an eternity because of you, well." His short bark of laughter didn't carry any humor. "You'll need to try much, much harder."

"What are you _talking about_?" Jack asked. He wrapped his other hand around his staff, taking comfort from the feel of the wood and ice under his fingers. This wasn't how he thought his night was going to go. What was Pitch talking about? There was no trap. As much as it made him feel ashamed to admit, Jack just wanted attention. Wandering around all night with someone who treated you as if you were invisible wasn't pleasant.

Then again, unpleasant may have been a better alternative to what was happening. He'd poked the bear with a stick one too many times, he supposed.

"Please. You're not expecting me to believe you're not waiting to run back to the other Guardians and tell them it worked, they had a good-" he smiled mockingly "-reason to lock me up again and throw away the key this time."

"What are you talking about?" Jack demanded. He was starting to feel almost dirty..

Pitch eyes were boring a hole into Jack as he stared. After a moment, he laughed again, the same harsh bark of laughter. "Oh this is too precious. They didn't tell you, did they? What would happen to me if you ever came to them and said I was anything less than a perfect gentleman?"

"Stop it," Jack said, feeling ill. "They wouldn't- They're not like that. We've already had this conversation."

"Of course," Pitch said, and suddenly the shadows around Jack — shadows he hadn't even noticed growing — dissipated and the world was significantly less dark again. He turned back to his work like Jack wasn't even there, while Jack stared at his back with eyes almost bugging out.

Jack didn't follow him as he moved down the street, rooted to the spot as he was. "They wouldn't do that," he mouthed. He knew them, he did, and they just wouldn't- They loved kids!

But Pitch wasn't a kid, was he? And their job was protecting kids. And as much as they needed Pitch, it wasn't… impossible that North would be looking into a way to spread just enough fear without having to rely on their greatest enemy.

This was so fucked up.

Jack raced to catch up to Pitch, who was already two blocks ahead. When he stopped beside him, he immediately said, "I wouldn't. I won't."

Pitch cast a sidelong look at him that was clearly disbelieving.

"I'm serious," Jack said, stubborn as glacial ice. "It's not right."

Pitch continued to not say anything.

After a moment of silence, Jack sighed, his shoulders slumping. "You don't have to believe me," he said. "I definitely don't believe you. But just in case…"

Pitch still didn't say anything.

"Yeah, okay," Jack said. "Point taken."

Later, Jack would ask North if this was true, too. And after North told him that of course it was, if Pitch was any trouble Jack just had to say something and he would be gone, Jack would end up standing outside of Burgess, staring at the lights of the town and feeling impossibly older than he was.

But for the moment, all he could do was turn the idea that the Guardians, in all of their infinite wisdom, were not as kind as he had once thought them to be.


	12. In Which Jack and Sandy Have a Chat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhhhhhh I'm just gonna drop this here and pretend I didn't disappear for forever. Yeah. Okay.
> 
>  **ETA:** Hey would you guys prefer like just a dump of all the currently written chapters (three more) or would you rather I pace them out?

Jack was more subdued the next time he picked up Pitch, the echoes of his discussion with North bouncing through his head. Tooth had been there, and both of them seemed to feel that his concern over Pitch was more worrying than what they were actually doing to Pitch.

North's parting words echoed in his head: "Do not worry about it, Jack. This is how it need to be, to keep us safe."

The underlying "we know what we're doing, thanks" didn't go unnoticed.

The first thing he said when Pitch materialized out of the darkness near him was a blurted, "I tried to talk to them."

"About what?" Pitch asked, looking both mildly intrigued and incredibly bored.

"About how unfair it is that they're treating you like… like…" Jack couldn't come up with the right word, but Pitch didn't let him flail for very long.

"Like a prisoner?" he asked. "I don't know if you've noticed-" he gestured around to the cavern they were in, and Jack couldn't help but follow the light of the golden sand around Pitch's wrists. "-I am a prisoner and this is my prison."

"That doesn't make this fair," Jack said, stubborn and wanting Pitch to agree that the Guardians were being unfair. Otherwise, what had been the point of Jack going to them, suffering through their worry that he was being corrupted by Pitch.

"Oh, Jack," Pitch said, his voice full of mocking sorry. "When has this ever been about fair?"

"It-" Jack started, but what could he say? This wasn't fair, but wasn't it what Pitch deserved? Wasn't this what was keeping the world safe from being thrown into another Dark Age?

He wasn't sure anymore.

Pitch was waiting for him to continue, one brow cocked like he knew that Jack wasn't going to be able to. As much as Jack didn't want to give him the satisfaction, his shoulders slumped and he had to admit defeat to himself. He didn't know what was right.

"We should get going," he said instead, ignoring the triumphant look that spread across Pitch's face.

"Of course," he said, gesturing for Jack to take the lead with a flair that was so mocking Jack almost turned on him.

Instead, Jack kept his distance while Pitch made his rounds around the world. There had to be a way to get the Guardians to be more reasonable. If only he could find it…

By the time it was almost dawn, Jack had run through countless options. None of them got past the fact that the Guardians were so much older than him and with so much more experience that they wouldn't listen to anything he had to say. Instead, His chances of convincing them to just… leave it were not good.

"I wouldn't, you know," he said suddenly. He didn't want to keep things from the Guardians, but this wasn't right. It bothered him to see Pitch so diminished, and if that wasn't terrifying then nothing was.

Pitch turned to look at him, his face not giving away if he understood what Jack was talking about. The cock of his head, part curious and part mocking, probably meant that he didn't. This sucked.

"I wouldn't tattle on you just because you pissed me off," Jack said, nervously twisting his staff back and forth in his fingers. He was basically giving Pitch free reign to do… well, almost anything when he was with Jack. "I mean, I'm not gonna let you hurt people, but."

Pitch's look had morphed into clear disbelief, which just served to make Jack angry. When had he been anything but truthful? He wasn't a liar and a- a bad guy like Pitch.

"I mean it," he said, his voice sharper than he meant it to be. "I wouldn't."

"Are you sure about that now," Pitch said, standing there in front of Jack and looking faintly murderous. Jack refused to be afraid. "I remember you saying something very, very different less than a year ago."

When Pitch tried to turn away from him, Jack didn't think about it,just darted forward and grabbed his wrist so he couldn't just walk off. Pitch hissed and jerked away, but not before Jack caught sight of the angry red rings underneath the dreamsand.

Pitch wasn't moving, his back to Jack and his whole body held carefully like he was waiting to whirl and fight back at the first sign of attack.

So Jack was very careful as he moved around to face Pitch. He didn't get close again, but met the burning hatred in Pitch's eyes with what he hoped was cool, calm detachment. Or something like it.

"What happened?" he asked, not sure if he even had a right to know.

After a long moment of silence and just as Jack was about to keep talking, Pitch held up his hands so the cuffs slid down his arms a little to reveal the angry rings of red around his wrists. "Is this what you wanted to see?" he snapped. "So you can gloat over just how your Guardians see fit to punish people they think have done wrong?"

"Why…" Jack started and trailed off, not sure what he was trying to ask. He was staring with horrified fascination at the red marks, too even to be caused by struggling against the chains binding him.

"I'm made of darkness and they're made of light." Pitch sneered at him. "What did you expect?"

"I- I didn't know," Jack said, ripping his eyes away from Pitch's hands, now held limply in front of himself, and meeting his eyes. He found himself understanding, more and more, why Pitch hated the Guardians so much.

"Of course not," The underlying bitterness of his words took away some of the weight of the scorn. "And why would you? Why would you question what your friends are doing? Why would you question a man who feels the need to keep a list of all the naughty children of the world so he can give them coal instead of presents? Why would you question a fairy who only leaves money for children whose teeth can be found when they fall out? Or a rabbit who-"

"I'm sorry," Jack said, stopping Pitch in mid-speech. The unpleasant feeling that lingered whenever he was in Pitch's company was back, and this time Jack had a name for it, knew what it was: _shame_. "You're right, I'm sorry."

He should have known. After all, how long was he on the Naughty list? Why had he assumed it was different for real kids? Why had he assumed that — even though he knew, in his heart, that the Guardians were forces of good in the world — that they weren't cruel as well?

He was. He was supposed to be a Guardian, but he could be just as cruel as he could be kind. How many times had a kid gotten hurt because he wasn't paying attention to messy human things like how bones got broken. How many times had he outright sought revenge on a parent of one of the kids, putting black ice in their path and bringing snow down on the roads. How many times had he-

"I'm sorry," he said again, unable to meet Pitch's eyes anymore. The shock that had briefly passed over his features was replaced with a hard, cold sort of anger.

"What good are your sorries?" Pitch asked, his voice flat. "What good is there in any of your words?"

"There isn't any," Jack said, brutally honest with both Pitch and himself. "This is so messed up. I need to-" He looked around, noticing for the first time that the deep well of shadow they were standing had almost halved in size, retreating from the encroaching dawn.

"You should just go," he said to Pitch, handing over the last snow globe, the one that would take him back underground. "I can't- Just go."

"You can't bear to think of your precious friends as torturers, can you?" Pitch asked, low and amused and dark. "Can't bear the idea that maybe you're just as complicit in this as the ones who made the decision. Can't-"

Jack didn't wait to see what Pitch would say next. Instead, he called up the wind and took to the sky, sailing away as quickly as he could. Because Pitch was right.

Pitch was right, and Jack didn't know what to do about that. The marks on his wrists were too even to be from anything other than the way the manacles chafed and rubbed and slowly burned away skin.

He couldn't go to North with this; he already knew what North would say and, coupled with the way he would look at Jack like he was worried Jack was beginning to side with Pitch, he couldn't deal with that.

Instead, he rode the wind around in the darkness of this half of the planet, trying to find Sandy.

It took hours, but finally he saw the sparkle of dreamsand in the light of the stars and was able to follow it to its source. He landed on Sandy's cloud, fingers digging into the wood of his staff. He didn't sit down when Sandy turned, smiled broadly, and motioned for him to do so.

"Did you know what your dreamsand would do to Pitch?" Jack asked before Sandy could get a word out.

The welcoming grin disappeared from Sandy's face, and symbols flashed over his head almost too quickly for Jack to catch. _They're for containing him._

"I know what they're for," Jack said. The clear evasion of his question had a quiet chill running down his spine. "We're the good guys. We're not supposed to hurt people!"

 _Pitch hurt a lot of people_ , Sand pointed out, like Jack didn't know that.

"But we're supposed to be different from him. We're supposed to be better!" Jack started pacing back and forth, gesturing angrily with his free hand. "We're supposed to be the good in the world and good people don't _do_ things like this."

Sandy planted himself in Jack's path, but Jack just stepped around him angrily. He would've gone on, but Sandy grabbed the leg of his jeans and stopped him with a sharp pull. Slowly, Jack turned back so he could see what Sandy was saying.

 _Sometimes, good people have to do bad things to keep the rest of this world safe._ Sandy's eyes were big and sorrowful. _That doesn't make them bad people, Jack, it just means they're willing to do the hard things so other people don't have to._

"I don't want to be a part of this," Jack said, letting out a shuddering breath. "I don't like- I don't like hurting people who-" He ripped himself away from Sandy and backed away a few steps, almost to the edge of the cloud.

 _This isn't a time for being squeamish_. The signs above Sandy's head were speeding up, there and gone the more agitated he got. _Pitch is dangerous. He needs to be … we can't lower our guard because he's weak, we … protect the … deserves … children._

"I didn't catch all that, Sandy, it was too fast," Jack said, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "But I don't think that we're doing the right thing. I don't think Pitch deserves what we're doing. Isn't there a way to limit his power without hurting him?"

_No._

"Sandy…" Jack trailed off at the look on Sandy's face.

 _He killed me, remember?_ Sandy asked, cocking an eyebrow pointedly.

"Yeah, but you came back." It sounded feeble even to Jack's ears. "There has to be _something_. I don't want to be this person. I don't want to help if you're all just going to-"

 _You don't have to help_ , Sandy said, interrupting him and floating up so they were eye level with each other. _I'll go back to guarding Pitch, you go back to making snowballs._

"No!" Jack said, maybe too fast from the way Sandy's eyes widened and he floated back. "No," he said more calmly. "That wouldn't be fair to you."

 _This isn't about what's fair_ , Sandy said. _It's about what's right._

Jack grimaced at the unexpected echoing of Pitch's words to him. Sometimes he forgot that Sandy was ancient, maybe as ancient as Pitch. That once upon a time, there'd been a world where it was only the two of them and countless humans living in isolated tribes. That maybe they had been friends.

"I don't think it's right," Jack finally said, meeting Sandy's eyes. "It's not right."

Sandy nodded once, gravely. _I will come up with another solution to save your conscience._

It was grudging, and Jack wasn't at all sure that it wasn't being said just to get him to let the subject go.

"Thank you," he said, hoping the sincerity he felt radiated from every word.

Sandy nodded, and just like that, the conversation was over and Sandy moved on, smiling like it had never happened. _While you're here, do you want a nap?_

"No thanks," Jack said. "I have to get going anyway. I'll see you around!"

With those last words, he let himself fall backward off the cloud, trusting the wind to catch him.


	13. In Which Jack and North Have a Chat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-betaed, as usual. Y'all were fifty-fifty on the dump all the chapters now or not question, so I'm compromising by putting them out more often but not, like. All at once. Good?

"I am not thinking that would be a good idea, Jack." North's voice was faintly disapproving, and his arms were crossed over his chest. Jack was never sure how much of his look was for show. On the one hand, tattoos! Angry face! On the other hand, shook like a bowl full of jelly. Generally jolly.

"You are not listening," North said, breaking Jack out of his thoughts.

"No, no! I was!" Jack said, casting about wildly for any clue as to what North had been saying for a second before giving up. "I just- I think that if Pitch were given something to do more often, there would be less time for him to plot… things," he finished lamely.

"You are getting too close to Pitch," North said, uncrossing his arms long enough to wag a finger at Jack. "I worried this would happen. I said to myself-"

"I'm not getting too close to Pitch," Jack said over him. "It just makes sense. When he's out scaring children, he isn't plotting revenge. So the more he's out doing that, the less time he has to figure out how to take over the world again."

"And who would be taking on these extra nights, hmm?" North asked, his expression of disapproval not wavering. "We are all busy, even when it is not our season."

"I know," Jack said. "And if-" he swallowed "-if no one can find time to do two nights instead of one, I'll pick up the rest."

"Hmm," North said. "That is too much Pitch, Jack. He can be persuasive in ways you never could believe."

"I know," Jack said. He knew it was true. He hadn't had to spend much time around Pitch to figure that out. But that didn't matter at the moment. "I'll be careful. And," Jack grimaced a little before forcing his features to smooth out, "he's still chained and weak. That's not going to change." Unless Sandy came up with an alternative.

Jack was beginning to doubt that he would. It wasn't, after all, a priority for him. Not like spreading dreams out to children was a priority. Jack — and Pitch, of course — were the only two who cared. It was frustrating, and made Jack's temper short.

"North," he said, meeting North's eyes with what he hoped as strength and steely determination. "This is the right thing to do. I want to do this. I'm _going_ to do this."

North had the decency not to laugh at that last part. Jack was starkly aware that if North didn't want him to do something, he wouldn't be doing the thing.

"Perhaps," North said, the tension across his shoulders and in his broad arms easing a fraction. "We worry about you. You are being alone so often, it is hard to know you. To make sure you are being okay."

Jack couldn't tell if North meant it as hard to check on him or had to check _up_ on him. He decided to go with the former, cutting North some slack even though his gut was saying it was the latter.

"Come," North said, sweeping out an arm to usher Jack toward the door of the small room they were in. "Let me show to you the secret way of getting into Pitch's lair. Then you will not be needing to use so many snow globes, eh?"

Jack nodded, a slight smile tugging at his lips as North smiled at him. "I'm okay, you know," he said suddenly and before he could stop himself. "I can take care of myself. You don't need to worry."

"Of course," North said, glancing at him as they walked down the hall side-by-side. "But you do not have to always be taking care of yourself. You can let other people help you."

Jack nodded where he was supposed to. And North was right, in a way. If one of the Guardians ever needed something, Jack would be right there with what they needed if he could be. Of course he would help them. But they… He was sure they would help him if he asked, but how could he do that? How could he come out and say "I'm not as okay as I thought" without making them pity him and smother him and do all the things he was afraid of?

He couldn't.

"I know," he said instead of any of the things going through his head. "And I would. Will. I will let you know if I need something."

North didn't look convinced. "If you are to be becoming Pitch's main guard, you must be willing to tell us when something is wrong."

"I just said I would," Jack said, gritting his teeth at how North didn't believe him. "But I don't need anything right now, and I haven't needed anything at all, so this is kinda a dumb conversation to be having. I know I can come to you guys. I know I can."

North still didn't look convinced. "You must promise me. Promise me if something is getting out of hand, you will come to one of us."

"Yeah, sure," Jack said as he pushed through the door ahead of them. It opened on a room with a large center table that was completely covered with a map of the world. "Whoa…"

"It is very much whoa, yes," North said. He wandered through the shelves on the wall and piles of maps and books on the floor before going "Ah ha!" and pulling out a slim book. "This is what you will use to get Pitch to and from, and this-" he pulled a locket out of the back of the book. "Is how you will be able to pass through the enchantments trapping him there. You must never, ever, let Pitch know about this locket, or he will be trying to steal it."

"Yeah, I got it," Jack said. He reached out and too the locket, and carefully slipped it over his head and under his hoodie. It was warm against his skin, but it would soon cool off. Once it was safely tucked underneath the fabric of his hoodie, he took the book of maps from North.

It was ancient, and each map was accompanied by a set of directions. Some included foot patterns, like for people learning to dance. It was complicated to say the least.

"Wha…" Jack said, holding the book open and tilting it back to North on one of the more complicated pages of step patterns. "Is this the right book?"

"Of course!" North said. He took it back and flipped through pages for a moment before handing it to Jack again. "Here, this is the page. Follow the directions and it will be fine. Inside the lair, of course, there is different story." He leaned over and took the book again, flipped to the right page, and handed it back.

This was a much simple pattern of footwork — it didn't look like it required moving around a field and circling multiple plants — and Jack was sure he would be able to figure it out quickly.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Thanks. Is there an easier way to get across the world since Pitch can't use his shadows?"

"You can always be using your friendship with the wind," North said. "But snow globes, they are much better way of moving."

"Okay," Jack said. He clutched the book to his chest and started to back out of the room. "Thanks. I'll keep you updated."

Then he fled for the safety of the outdoors, where the wind could cradle him and take him home while he fretted and reread the sections in the book. Read and reread and reread until it was burned in his eyes.

It still took him two tries to get it right once night fell, and he wasn't sure what he did wrong the first time — maybe picked the wrong set of white pine to walk between? He didn't know if that even mattered.

The hole that opened beneath him dropped him non-too-lightly in a part of Pitch's lair that he'd never seen before. It was a small room, dusty and unused. Water was dripping somewhere off in the darkness.

"Pitch?" Jack called out as he pushed himself up and stepped away from the wall. A whispering went through the darkness of the room, and Jack wished that his staff produced more light.

"Come on, Pitch." he yelled, trying not to let his immediate frustration bleed into his voice. "Do you really want me wandering around and getting into things I shouldn't?"

There was no response, of course. So Jack shrugged and started picking his way forward, narrowly avoiding bumping into a small table set to the side. There was a door in the opposite wall which opened with a stiff creak.

"Why does everything need to be so dramatic?" Jack muttered as he headed down the hallway the door revealed.

"Why indeed." Jack almost leapt out of his skin at the voice whispering in his ear. "What do you think you're doing here, Jack?" A warm finger trailed over his shoulders before the presence dropped away.

"Uh," Jack said. "Coming to get you."

A rough chuckle came from the shadows on the opposite side the whisper had come from. "But why _here_?"

"You mean this hallway? I don't know, ask North. He's the one who told me how to get here." Jack frowned into the darkness. He suddenly felt played, like he was just a pawn in a big game between the Guardians and Pitch.

" _North_ ," Pitch hissed, stepping out of the darkness in front of Jack. "Of course. The old fool."

"Uh, sure," Jack said. He nervously rattle the little snow globes in his hoodie's pocket. "You wanna go now?"

Pitch's look of scorn had Jack straightening and glaring back. Pitch just motioned for Jack to lead the way, which was fine with him. They ended up on the outskirts of another small town. Without looking back, Pitch strode off to begin his work. Jack went and climbed a tree that would let him have a view of the whole town if he was high enough, so he could track Pitch.

It was just cold enough for a dusting of snow, and Jack was considering creating just that, when he realized Pitch was coming back his way. He looked angry, but Jack couldn't think of any reason why he would be. At least, not at Jack. Still, he tumbled out of the tree to land on the ground, leaning back against the trunk as Pitch neared.

"What are you playing at?" Pitch spat out.

"Nothing?" Jack said, his mind racing as he tried to figure out what Pitch was talking about. He hadn't done anything, though.

"I knew it hadn't felt long enough since-" Pitch muttered to himself, so low Jack could barely catch it. Once he trailed off, he loomed over Jack a little, making Jack's heart race. Even if he wasn't intellectually scared, his body didn't seem to care. "You and your precious Guardians thought, what? That I wouldn't notice? That you could get dealing with me out of the way more _quickly_?"

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked, completely and totally bewildered.

"Playing dumb, Jack?" Pitch said. His pupils were wide with anger, the thin ring of gold that surrounded them almost invisible.

"I-" Jack said, and then it hit him. It was Tuesday, and if Jack stopped coming on Sunday nights, that would mean three days straight where Pitch was locked up. Jack didn't know if he had any sort of way of keeping time down there, but he bet it felt like an eternity. "Oh, no. No! I'm not- I went and talked to North. I convinced him if you were let out more often, you'd have less time to plot revenge. So now you get to hang out with me four days a week." He spread his arms in an "aren't you lucky" gesture.

Pitch didn't step back out of Jack's space, but suddenly he wasn't looming as much. His hands twitched, but he didn't move them any more. "You asked for this."

"Sure," Jack said. He shrugged and didn't add anything else, because what else was there to add? He was feeling sorry for the greatest enemy — the only enemy — he'd ever known. It wasn't something he really wanted to talk about.

"So foolish," Pitch said, his voice flat, and whirled away, leaving Jack to stare after him as he stalked back to the town.

That… definitely could've gone better.


	14. In Which Jack Helps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd, as usual. I think I've finally finished writing all of the cute enemies to friends portion, and am about to start on the plot and the friends to lovers section. So, you know, in five-ish more chapters, plot will start! Aren't y'all excited?

Pitch wasn't any more agreeable the next time Jack showed up, or the time after that. Jack was beginning to regret ever asking North if he could do this, and had started to wonder if he could back out. But…

But he kept following Pitch around, remembering all the stray cats he'd run across in cities during the winter. Some of them were friendly, yeah, but a lot of them hissed and backed away and clawed even when he was offering them food stolen from some hapless person by a gust of wind.

Night four. Jack lounged in a tree in the town square while Pitch went around, pulling fright out of the little houses. It was boring, waiting around for Pitch to decide he was done and reading to move on, especially in little towns like these where Pitch perversely seemed to spend extra time even though there were fewer kids to fear him.

"Hey," Jack called out on impulse, pushing himself upright. "Can I help?"

From across the square, Pitch's head twitched, but he didn't respond. Jack wasn't surprised. He'd been trying to ignore Jack to varying degrees of success for the past three days. Even the fun of annoying him into responding was getting boring quickly.

He jumped down from the tree, and landed on the cold ground. Frost spread out from his footprints with every step he took. It was early, maybe, for the frost, but this far to the North, no one would be surprised.

"Can I help?" Jack asked again, once he was standing next to Pitch. Pitch, who held himself stiff and tense. It was all Jack could do not to prod him with his staff to see if he shattered like weak ice.

"I don't need your help," Pitch finally said after a long moment of silence.

"Yeah, I know," Jack said. He rocked back on his heels and looked up at the house they were in front of. It was small, a single story, with a sharply sloped roof and windows fuzzy from the plastic taped over them inside. "But can I?"

"What part of 'I don't need you' are you not understanding?" Pitch hissed, still staring straight ahead at the house while pale gray shadows began to swirl out from his own shadow on the pavement..

It stole Jack's breath, even though he didn't care about Pitch's opinions. Pitch wasn't his friend, wasn't anything to him, and yet having the "I don't need you" so casually tossed out still echoed an old hurt.

He swallowed against the feeling and continued. "I don't care what you need. I'm bored and asking if I can help."

Pitch cast a whithering look his way and said, "Oh, so you're looking for entertainment, now? It's not enough to put me on parade like your own personal show pony? You want to be _entertained_ while doing it, too? I'm afraid that's-"

"Never mind," Jack said and stepped backward, and away. The shadows swirling around Pitch's shadow seemed to grip at his feet, making his steps jerky. He turned his back and walked away, tossing a, "Forget it," over his shoulder.

He was almost back to the tree — two of the branches were the perfect shape to cradle his body while he relaxed — when Pitch was suddenly beside him.

"Well, I suppose…" Pitch drifted off, leaving space for Jack to respond. Jack wasn't going to play his games and held his tongue instead. He wanted to be doing _something_ , but not enough to look like an overeager puppy begging for attention.

After an uncomfortable silence, Pitch slowly smirked and said, "I suppose there is something you could do for me."

"What is it?" Jack asked warily, an uncomfortable feeling crawling up the base of his spine. He didn't know what that look on Pitch's face meant, beyond that it didn't mean anything good.

"If you would be so kind-" Pitch's voice dripped with sarcasm "-as to send the wind whistling down that chimney there."

It was an easy enough request, one Jack could do blindfolded, really. So he walked with Pitch back to the side of the house while Pitch made things overcomplicated.

"No," he said, "that's too soft, make it louder. Louder. Higher pitched. _Not like that_. Only dogs could hear that; does it look like we're out here scaring mutts? Make it sound like this." He whistled out an ugly set of sounds, nothing like the soft murmurs the wind usually made, but Jack was able to match them after a moment.

"Can you stop the breeze through the whole town?" Pitch asked, and Jack scoffed.

"Of course I can."

"On my word, everything stops," Pitch's eyes were boring a hole into the side of his head as Jack nodded. A shadow had almost reached the lone lit window in the house. As soon as it hit the lip of the sill, Pitch bit out a sharp, almost pained, "Stop!"

The dead calm that followed, quiet and eerie and so clearly unnatural, had Jack shivering a little in his hoodie. He knew that the only dangerous things outside were him and Pitch, but it didn't stop dread from curling around the base of his spine at how everything was so artificially still.

Pitch took a step forward, and another, something hungry and greedy twisting his features. "The tree," he said, pointing toward a tree whose branches just touched a neighboring window and the side of the house. "Just a little."

The tiniest push of wind, coming almost straight down from the sky above sent the tree branches scraping across the side of the house and clawing on the glass of the window. Jack wasn't one hundred percent sure what Pitch was doing, but it looked like multiple shadows passed over the lit window. Or one big shadow with multiple parts.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing even though Pitch's back was to him.

"Just her worst nightmare come to life," Pitch said absently, and then added, "Make the branches scratch more."

Jack did as he was told, a slow sort of joy building in his stomach. He didn't know what he was doing, but seeing all the parts come together into a whole — a whole he could almost see — was exciting.

A shadow slunk through the window, a hunched, skeletal figure with long arms dragging against the ground. Jack tried to match the movement of the tree branches to the movements the shadow was making with little puffs of wind. He knew he had done it right when Pitch cast a surprised look over his shoulder but didn't tell Jack to stop.

The shriek that came from the house startled Jack, making him lose control of the wind. A strong breeze immediately whipped up around the house and fled through the town, the last of that fall's leaves being torn off the branches in its wake.

Pitch was leaning forward almost imperceptibly, the hunger on his face painfully stark. It made Jack uncomfortable to watch, so he turned away, grinning to himself. A few silent minutes later, he felt Pitch by his side.

"Not all you had hoped for?" Pitch asked, his voice mild and, when Jack glanced over, the sharp angles of his face gave nothing away. "Not so _fun_?"

"What?" Jack asked, turning to face him. "Are you kidding? That was great! Maybe not the kind of fun I'm used to, but that doesn't mean it wasn't. It was like… Like reading a scary book under the covers at night. That kind of fun."

"And you've read many 'scary books' in bed?" Pitch asked, mocking.

"No, but I bet you know the feeling I mean." Jack laughed a little, almost giddy. "Once you stopped trying to micromanage everything, it was great."

"Micro-" Pitch started, and then drew himself up to his full height and looked down his nose at Jack. "Frightening people is an art form. You can't just throw together a little wind and shadow and hope it turns into something that strikes terror in the hearts of- What? Why are you laughing?" Pitch's glare was heated but confused.

Jack got himself under control and, without thinking about it, reached out and patted Pitch's arm in mock consolation. "Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night."

They both seemed to realize what Jack had done at the same instant, Pitch stiffening, his glare intensifying, and Jack taking a big step backward. Of all the stupid things to do, he had to go and antagonize the guy who was more powerful than all the Guardians at his peak, current weakened state notwithstanding. It wouldn't last forever, after all.

"Uh," he said and quickly pulled a snow globe out of his hoodie pocket at random. "Next stop?"

Pitch inclined his head just the slightest bit, so Jack opened the portal and stepped through swiftly. It was bright on the other side, brighter than it should be for that time of night, and Jack felt ripped apart and hollow as two people walked right through him. He stumbled, gasping and curled protectively over the emptiness in him, to the side where there was a darkened overhang people were avoiding.

He knew that it wasn't the same thing as in the last half of the previous century; that plenty of people could see him and he wasn't alone anymore. He knew that, but still, the pain stole his breath away and for a moment it felt like he was back there, when none of the humans could see him and none of the not-humans wanted anything to do with him.

After a long moment of embarrassing panic, a hand landed on Jack's shoulder, soft and barely-there. He leaned into it gratefully. It had been decades since he'd been caught so off-guard that someone walked through him, and he'd almost forgotten the feeling, almost forgotten how terrifying it was to feel like he was being ripped apart from a million different directions at once.

"Breathe, Jack," Pitch said, his voice distant.

Jack nodded and couldn't help the tiny noise of despair that left him when Pitch took his hand away. After a moment of hesitation, Pitch rested his hand on Jack's back with just enough pressure that Jack could feel it was there, but not enough to make Jack feel like anything but a problem.

That feeling made him force himself to stop breathing shallowly, to straighten until Pitch's hand fell away. This time, Jack stopped the noise from escaping. He took a step to the side, away from Pitch, and tipped his head back to look at the sky. There should have been stars out, but the lights of the carnival were too bright.

"Sorry," he said, not looking at Pitch. When Pitch made a noncommittal noise, the tension that had been filling Jack's limbs flowed out of him like water along with the dread curling in his stomach. He laughed a little. "I didn't expect- Anyway. Where are we?"

"You're the one who would know," Pitch said, gesturing to the pocket of Jack's hoodie.

"I know where we _are_ ," Jack said, layering crossness over the embarrassment he felt for being seen like that by Pitch, of all people. "I meant, why is there a carnival here and do you think I can get the whole place going with a snowball fight?"

"You'd have to get the snow first," Pitch said dryly, but Jack just grinned at him and sent a flurry of snow swirling around Pitch.

"That's the easy part," he said. But, looking back over the people enjoying their fall carnival, he found his eyes drawn to the rides off to the side. Those were a good source for fun, one he didn't often get to taste as a winter spirit. "I'm gonna go check out the rides," he said and started weaving his way through the people strolling along the paths, not bothering to check and see what Pitch was doing.

They'd reached a sort of truce. Pitch didn't try to do anything the Guardians would frown on, and Jack didn't follow him around like a clerk following a teenager in a department store. Jack didn't trust him — that would be foolish — but he did trust that Pitch wouldn't try to… escape or take over the world or whatever. At least, he wouldn't at the moment.

If it didn't have to happen at night, if Jack could've been doing his own thing while Pitch was off scaring people, it wouldn't've even been boring. As it was, this was the first time he wasn't going to be the slightest bit bored while Pitch went around scaring the pants off people.

He was surprised to feel Pitch's presence by his side a few moments after he stopped in front of the tilt-a-whirl — the only ride with a line short enough that he could probably get a free booth. He chanced a glance over, only to see Pitch watching the whirling booths consideringly.

Jack realized, surprised, that there was probably plenty of fear here for Pitch to feed on, and couldn't stop the questions from coming out. "Do people having fun when they're scared feel the same as when they're not? Does it taste different? Is it like how the fun everyone's having is different from fun I created?"

Pitch was staring at him, making Jack regret opening his mouth in the first place, but he couldn't take back the questions so he just stared back, willing his gaze to remain even and expectant. Willing there to be no hint of fear in it, even though Pitch's blank face was making him want to take a step back and potentially run.

"It's… different," Pitch said after he turned away. "It's sweet, like the cotton candy they sell here. Just as filling, too."

"I've never had cotton candy," Jack admitted. "I don't know what that means."

Pitch smirked at him. "It leaves you feeling hungrier than before."

"Oh," Jack said, looking around with a bit of disappointment. It would've been fun to stay for a while, even with the risk of someone walking through him. It almost felt like a waste, enduring the first few minutes of being here only to leave soon after. "You want to go someplace else? There's gotta be sleeping people further into the city."

Pitch opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again without saying anything. Jack watched him curiously, and for a moment it looked like Pitch was struggling with what to say. In the end, he nodded and said, "Further into the city would be better."

Jack felt oddly disappointed, but even though they'd reached a truce, that didn't mean Jack didn't need to stay somewhat close. He didn't need to dog Pitch's steps, but he couldn't stay at the carnival and have fun while Pitch was loose on the city.

He suppressed a sigh as they started walking toward the center of the city and consoled himself with the knowledge that if he wanted to, he could come back the next night. Tooth would be guarding Pitch then, so Jack's night was free.


	15. In Which Halloween Happens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's nice writing a fic that happens half a decade in the future because I get to imagine grandmas who understand internet memes from the teens and how embarrassing they would be to their grandkids.

October came on fast, with kids playing in leaf piles that crisped up with frost on the edges, and the wind spiraling through bare branches. Pitch was noticeably calmer when Jack went to collect him, spending less time trying to scare Jack and more time hurrying him along. After the first night of October, where Pitch seemed to linger and look out over the town for just a moment too long, Jack started bringing along extra snow globes.

Pitch didn't say anything, but Jack liked to think that he was grateful.

At the beginning of the second week of October, Pitch was a ways down the street, doing his own thing while Jack coated the edges of individual fallen leaves with rime. He wasn't paying attention to what where he was going, much more interested in the jagged edges of frost he was leaving in his wake. So when he walked directly into someone, he looked up with a scowl, assuming it was Pitch.

Instead, the scowling face of a one of the winged men that rode the South Wind was looking down at him, the feathers of his wings seeming to flutter in the breeze that wasn't there. Jack took a quick step back, tightening his grip on his staff. He didn't always get along with the spirits that rode the other winds, especially not the ones that bracketed him and the North Wind.

"You overstep, frostling," the man said, the scowl fading off his face to be replaced with stony disapproval. Jack wasn't sure where he ranked in the hierarchy of the rest of the spirits anymore, but being a Guardian had to count for something, right?

"I'm just reminding kids that they have snow to look forward to," he said, making sure his tone was just on the right side of the line between bold an disrespectful. Still, when the man took a step forward, he took a step back, bringing his staff a little more between them.

"It is not yet your time." The disapproving look was quickly starting to get to Jack, even though he didn't particularly care what any individual spirit thought about him. The man lifted his hands, beginning to wind a spell of some sort between his fingers.

"The frost'll melt before anyone wakes up, so I don't know what you're complaining about," Jack said. He let the cold of frost flow from his fingers up and down his staff, coating it with a layer of ice. He could feel the first tugs of the South Wind at his hair and clothes; it was still close enough to summer that a good-sized summer storm could be called up, and the warm rains would do more to melt Jack's ice than the rising temperature through the day would. He hated getting caught out in summer rain.

The man shook his head as the clouds began to gather overhead, blotting out the light from the stars and the Moon. "You shouldn't stray onto the territory of others," he said as the clouds grew thicker and seemed to swallow the light from the street lamps.

No, it wasn't the clouds blocking out the street lamps, it was _shadows_.

Jack almost laughed with delight as he watched a shape loom up out of the darkness behind the man, until the only thing Jack could see were the two pinprick eyes. The man's twisting fingers slowed, then stopped altogether as he turned and looked up… and up… and up.

"And what do you know of straying, Minas of the Southern Winds?" Pitch said, in the voice that rumbled out of the air from every direction.

"I-" Minas started, looking around, his wings snapping out in distress as the shadows seemed to swallow the last of the light around them. Jack knew it should've been unnerving, but he was starting to find something of a comfort in darkness. He was starting to associate it with _Pitch_ and not _the Bogeyman_.

" _Run_ ," Pitch hissed and Minas took off like a shot, first on foot, and then leaping into the air to fly away.

Jack couldn't help but to snicker and turn to Pitch, grinning widely. Part of him wanted to protest that he could've handled the situation, but the rest of him was just… almost happy that he hadn't had to face the threat of violence alone for once. Pitch looked at him, his face blank before settling into a frown.

"Thanks," Jack said, forestalling anything cruel Pitch was about to say.

"Yes, well," he said after a moment. "It would be inconvenient if the other Guardians thought any of your injuries were my fault."

"Hey!" Jack protested, not actually feeling as indignant as he knew he should. But so much for not pointing out he could take care of himself. "I would've been fine. It's not like that sort of thing hasn't happened before."

Pitch looked at him for a long moment for letting out a short, "Hmm," and walking away.

Jack stared for a moment, then scrambled to catch up with him. "Hey!" he shouted, grimacing when Pitch's shoulders tightened and he stopped but didn't turn around. That hadn't been what he'd meant to do, he just wanted to ask this while he was thinking about it so he didn't forget. "Halloween is one of my nights this year. Where do you want to go?"

Pitch turned to face him. "Where…?"

"For Halloween," Jack repeated. "You know better than me where you need to be since it's basically your holiday. So what snow globes should I be picking up?"

Something terrifyingly close to wonder seemed to cross over Pitch's face before he rattled off a list of names that Jack tried to commit to memory.

Jack hadn't expected he would have to make a case with North about why Pitch should even be _allowed_ out on Halloween. It was his holiday, after all; it would be like forcing North to stay inside on Christmas.

North's argument that they'd kept him locked up for the last fifty-odd years on Halloween and it hadn't hurt anybody just made Jack more pissed. And louder.

"I'm doing this North," he yelled, before stomping to the nearest window and jerking it open. North's hand landed hard on his shoulder, making Jack jerk away, furious. But North was bigger and stronger than him and had him spun around, both hands on Jack's shoulders, before Jack could escape.

"This is bad idea," he said, his eyes harder than they had any right to be in the warm glow of the main workshop. His hands, usually warm and comfortable and easy to lean into, were burning brands into Jack's skin. He couldn't melt -- he had too much flesh and blood left for that -- but in that moment, he wouldn't've been surprised if he did.

"I don't care," Jack said. "It's cruel. I get why you all hate him, I do. But that doesn't mean you get to be cruel."

North's eyes softened as he said, "Jack... This is not like you. What has Pitch been-"

"Nothing," Jack snapped. "I'm around kids all day, every day for almost the entire year. I know cruelty when I see it."

"It is keeping us and the children safe," North said. "It is-"

"No," Jack said. "It's not. Are you going to let me take these snow globes so I can do my job or what? I don't have time for this."

"Jack..." North tried.

"No," Jack said. His throat felt scratchy from yelling, and he was suddenly aware of how many yetis and elves were carefully Not Listening to their fight. He ducked out from under North's hands as soon as they slackened their hold. "No. Not tonight."

North sighed, from deep in his chest. "We worry, Jack. That is all. You are spending more time with Pitch than any of your friends. He is tricky, and-"

"If I was as easily manipulated as you seem to think I am," Jack said, choosing his words carefully, "you could've shut down this conversation before it even started."

North seemed surprised at that, before the lines on his face shifted from anger to something closer to worry.

"Be careful," he finally said.

Jack forced a grin at that. "Aren't I always?" he said before dropping out the window with his bounty of snow globes in a sack he got an elf to steal from a yeti.

"This is why we worry," North yelled after him.

Jack headed straight for Pitch's lair, even though it was far too early to start the scaring. When he landed on the floor of the room that was getting less dusty all the time, he rattled the bag of snow globes and shouted Pitch's name before leaning back against the wall to wait.

If it had been as dusty as the first time he'd been there, the back of his hoodie would've been caked with the stuff. As it was, he'd been in and out of the room so often, brushing against and touching everything as he waited for Pitch, that it was starting to look more like a regular room that got used daily. It sort of did, if the few minutes Pitch took to get there every night counted.

Jack closed his eyes as he leaned back, to silently seethe at how North couldn't just trust that Jack knew what he was doing. That Jack wasn't some bright-eyed little kid being lured into a dingy van by a stranger's offer of candy. It wasn't fair, and he knew that if he'd gone to Tooth he would've got the same treatment. Never even mind Bunny. Sandy was the only one who might've just nodded and let him do what he was going to do anyway. But Sandy didn't control the snow globes, and besides, there was still the chance that he hated Pitch more than he trusted Jack.

"Jack."

Jack jerked, nearly losing his grip on the bag of snow globes, and opened his eyes to see Pitch standing in front of him, his brow slightly furrowed in the confused expression he occasionally wore when he thought Jack wasn't looking.

"Hey," Jack said and rattled the bag again. "I got everywhere you wanted, I think."

"Hmm," Pitch said, taking the bag when Jack held it out to him. "That old fool didn't give you trouble over it?"

"Nah," Jack said, his eyes flicking away just long enough that when he met Pitch's eyes again he could see that he knew it was a lie. Still, the tiny note of concern in Pitch's voice warmed him more than North's hands on his shoulders had.

"It's early," Pitch said, instead of calling Jack out on it, for which Jack was absurdly grateful. He didn't want Pitch to know just how rocky his relationship with the Guardians was. He didn't want to have to admit aloud that his relationship with the Guardians sometimes seemed even worse than it had been before the battle with Pitch.

"Too early?" Jack asked. He looked around, slightly nervous. He didn't like spending much time in Pitch's lair. It was still dark and creepy, and there was only so much ambient light and so much light his staff could produce. When he looked back at Pitch, the smug smile on Pitch's face made him scowl. "I mean, I can go. I'm sure North would be ecstatic if I agreed to leave you down here to rot tonight."

Pitch's smirk faltered for a minute, before returning. "You wouldn't, Jack. You're too... _good_."

"Shut up," Jack said, without any heat in it. "Is it too early or not? Because I can come back later."

"No," Pitch said, still looking slightly smug. "No, not too early at all."

The night wasn't much different than any of their others. Jack was too distracted by the few grandparents that were taking kids around as Pitch worked his magic. His figurative magic, Jack quickly amended in his head. He didn't want to know what the world would look like if Pitch had access to real magic.

The grandma he was slowly trailing after shivered as Pitch sent candle flame shadows flickering and made the shadows cast by pumpkins more toothy and sinister than they would have been. She was grinning, though, as she turned to nudge her friend while the two kids between them ran ahead.

"Haven't had a Halloween like this in years," she said quietly. Jack picked up the pace a little, to get closer so he could hear them better.

"Reminds me of when we were little kids," the friend said. "Remember that, Jess? The way we thought we could feel ghosts following us when we were running between houses?"

"Yeah." Jess sighed, then flinched away from the twisting shape of a tree branch before realizing it was just a shadow and laughing at herself. Shrieks came from up ahead of them, but they were the fun kind of shrieks, from when something was just scary enough to get the blood going but not an actual danger.

The friend laughed and nodded her head toward the kids across the street, who were dashing between the lit circles of from the street lamps. "Just like that."

Jess joined her in laughing, and Jack couldn't help but laugh a little too at the way the kids were yelling and trying to not be the last one left in the dark between pools of light. There was something in the air, something he hadn't felt on Halloween for years. Not even when it was cold enough to be having real fun with the kids out trick-or-treating.

"It's spooky," Jess said, the smile on her face and light glimmering in her eyes making her look twenty years younger for a moment. "It's been so long since Halloween was actually spooky."

They were silent for a moment, before the friend whispered, "Spoopy," under her breath and the two of them burst into laughter.

Jack slowed his steps and lost them in the sudden chaos of a stream of teenagers coming out of a haunted house, some screaming and some whooping with joy. It didn't matter, though. He hooked the crook of his staff around a tree branch and swung himself up onto it, before climbing as far up as he could without breaking branches. He could see Pitch down the street, following a group of little kids and their parents while shadows flickered in his wake.

Jack jumped down from the tree and set out to catch up to him. As he moved through the families walking on the sidewalks, he realized that the two old ladies weren't the only ones who thought things were more scary than usual that year. Almost every adult looked slightly on edge, like the way kids got when they were watching scary movies after bedtime. He heard a few of them talking about the pumpkins and shadows and "the grim reaper in that haunted house".

After a moment of following that group of parents specifically, he realized they were talking about Pitch.

Jack had almost caught up to Pitch when he heard a high voice shout "Bogeyman!" and a little girl went tearing past him, crashing into one of the adults and clinging. She wasn't crying, though, and when Jack looked up, he saw Pitch smiling softly at the kid.

Stunned, Jack didn't look away fast enough, and accidentally caught Pitch's eye. The smile dropped from Pitch's face in an instant to be replaced with a furious glare. He turned, shadows swirling, and strode forward without saying anything to Jack.

That smile was going to stick with Jack for a while.


	16. In Which a Dream is Born

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh you guys. I feel like I need to make it known here that I think both the Guardians and Pitch are right bastards at times, and I'm not trying to say that the Guardians are terrible people, just that their priorities don't align with Pitch's priorities, I guess. Please don't hate me. :(
> 
> As always, unbeta'd.

Jack fell into a rhythm with Pitch over the next few weeks, as the year crept through November. It wasn't anything he could call an _easy_ rhythm — nothing with Pitch could ever be called easy — but it was certainly a less… confrontational rhythm. Pitch could do his thing, and sometimes Jack offered to help, and other times he wandered off on his own until Pitch found him.

The weather was growing colder, cold enough in most of the northern latitudes that he could reasonably bring up flurries and light dustings of snow that made the pavement slippery enough for kids to have fun sliding down it until the adults started sprinkling salt.

He, Bunny, Tooth, and North came to an informal arrangement, where Jack was in charge of the northern third of the planet, and the other three split up the southern two thirds, where Jack couldn't really go without it wiping him out for days afterward, or getting in trouble with the spirits that lived in the colder regions.

He just didn't understand why it had to be so _hot_ everywhere and people were so against having a little bit of fun.

It was Thanksgiving in the United States, although the thanks giving was long over and the Man in the Moon watched over them from his post in the sky. A cold front had descended on New England, bringing with it a chill wind that was at Jack's command and the taste of snow in the air.

He amused himself, directing the wind and snow, creating small drifts against trees and stoops alike. The way the snow was kicking up seemed to annoy Pitch, so Jack made sure to follow him around, just far enough away that he could blame the wind itself for messing with Pitch, but close enough that Pitch would know he was lying.

More and more, Jack was realizing that fun with a spark of danger was, well, more fun. The excitement of possibly needing to defend himself, or others, gave a bite to the fun he was having that he couldn't find anywhere else. It was like being on a rollercoaster without a seatbelt.

Behind him, a few blocks away, Pitch had stopped and was standing oddly, kind of hunched over by a window. Like he was hurt, or curling around something to protect it from view. Jack wasn't sure which option was worse, but either way, he drifted closer until he could almost see what Pitch was doing.

Unfortunately, that was when Pitch noticed him and hastily swept something into the darkness of his robes. He straightened in an obvious attempt to look like he hadn't been doing anything, but Jack wasn't anywhere close to fooled. For one thing, he looked too calm, like he wasn't annoyed that Jack had snuck up on him. Judging by past experience, there was little Pitch hated more than whenever Jack snuck up on him.

"Watcha doing?" Jack asked, leaning casually against his staff and trying to look like he didn't care. Pitch was more likely to give out information if he looked like he didn't care.

"What?" Pitch asked, feigning confusion and looking between Jack and the window. The answer wasn't as obvious as that, and Jack knew it.

"What was that?" he asked, slowly straightening because the casual look wasn't getting him anywhere, if Pitch was already playing the "I have no idea what you're talking about" game.

"What was what?" Pitch asked, the mystification on his face too blatant to be real. He was half turned away from Jack, so Jack moved slightly to the side, to see if Pitch would turn more. He did.

"Whatever you put in your robe," Jack said, gesturing. "C'mon, I'm bored. Whatever it was has to be entert-"

He broke off with a sharp click of his teeth as a tiny black nose pushed its way out of Pitch's robes, followed by a head and the long neck of a Nightmare. Then it was wobbling on its gangly legs, unsteady in the air, completely outside of the safety of Pitch's robe but still close. It was only a few inches high, and clearly just a newborn. Jack automatically put out a hand to touch it, it looked so soft and cute-

"Don't-" Pitch's strangled word had him snatching his hand back and looking up at Pitch's face.

"Sorry," Jack said, meeting Pitch's intense stare. His face was harder than Jack had ever seen it, and it was making Jack nervous.

But not nervous enough not to ask, "Why's it so tiny?" He held onto his staff with both hands, so he couldn't reach out and try to touch again. It was just so cute as it moved unsteadily through the air in front of Pitch, little tendrils of black sand swirling behind it.

Jack knew he should be scared. That he should probably tell the Guardians about this, but… it was one Nightmare, and it was so small. How much harm could it possibly do?

"That's what Nightmares look like when they're born out of bad dreams," Pitch said, slow and cautious. Jack's eyes flicked between Pitch and the Nightmare, his mind suddenly full of questions like were all Nightmares actually mares and did Pitch call the babies Nightfoals or something, and- "They don't get to be the size of mortal horses unless they're fat on fear."

Pitch's voice stopped him before he could ask any of his questions, and after a moment of silence, Pitch added, "She'll get bigger, but never as big as the Nightmares you saw."

Jack nodded. That was reassuring, because those Nightmares had been huge and terrifying. And he just couldn't associate the same feeling he felt around them with the tiny thing gamboling in the air between them.

"Why can't I touch her?" he asked, watching her. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Pitch flinch a little, or maybe start with surprise.

"You… can," Pitch said carefully, hesitant with his permission. But Jack didn't care. He reached out again, slow, and ran a single finger down the Nightmare's back. A shiver of apprehension crawled up his spine, like the feeling of sitting on a sled at the top of a big hill with a road at the bottom. It wasn't painful in the way being scared sometimes was, but he could guess at the kinds of nightmares even a tiny Nightmare could dredge up with just that feeling alone.

And yet… "She's beautiful," he breathed out, stroking her again, and then laughing a little as she lipped at one of his fingernails.

Pitch made a strangled noise, one that Jack didn't bother trying to decipher, too entranced with the little foal in front of him.

"Your friends would disagree," Pitch said, his voice quiet but laced with disgust.

"Hmm?" Jack asked, barely bothering to look up the first time, but he had to do a double-take at the look on Pitch's face.

"How many Nightmares do you think have been born from the dreams of children since your Guardians started… ushering me around?" Pitch's voice was low and harsh, and Jack suddenly realized that he was furious. That's what that look on his face was: impotent fury.

Still… "Uh," Jack said. He just couldn't picture them purposefully doing anything to something as tiny and… "...none?"

Pitch's smile was not kind, much like when Jack found out the manacles never came off. "You should ask them," he said, his voice silky and sweet and dripping with venom. "Ask just how many they've killed and turned into dreamsand; see if they kept count."

Horror spread through Jack's veins like poison at the implication, even though he knew it was coming. "You're lying," he said, but even he could hear the waver in his voice.

"This again?" Pitch asked, sounding bored. But Jack didn't miss how he casually swept the Nightmare closer to him, careful not to let it anywhere near the dreamsand around his wrists, so it was far closer to Pitch than it was to Jack. "Really, Jack. What is it going to take for you to realize that being on the side of good doesn't mean they're not zealots in their own way?"

"And you aren't?" Jack spat out. He gripped his staff harder, using the steadiness of the wood to stop his hands from shaking.

"I never pretended to be anything different," Pitch said. The disdain in his voice had Jack clenching his jaw hard, even as he wavered.

He couldn't hold onto his anger, not while looking at the tiny Nightmare, not while wondering where Pitch could've hidden the rest of them in his lair. Not while wondering how anyone could look at the little thing in front of him and consider it a threat.

"You're lying," he said again, weaker.

"But you're not going to ask, are you," Pitch said, more a statement of fact than a question. It should've scared Jack, how easily Pitch read him. But it didn't anymore.

"They wouldn't do that," he said, but he could hear the uncertainty in his voice and, judging from the way his smile grew in cruelty, so could Pitch.

"Oh, I think you'd find that they would," he said. The little Nightmare seemed to disappear into his robe as he stepped forward, into Jack's space. "If you were brave enough to ask."

"I-" Jack swallowed, his throat clicking. "I don't have to. I trust them."

"Of course," Pitch said as he loomed over Jack. "You follow them blindly because they've given you a place, friends, and believers. It wouldn't do to find they were using you instead of doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, would it?"

The change in topic had Jack reeling. "What-" he said, stepping back only to have Pitch step with him.

"Would you still be so content to believe in their righteousness if you knew that they only put up with you because the Man in the Moon told them to? That-"

It suddenly clicked, and Jack almost started laughing. Instead, he stood up straight and said, "Pitch," in as even a voice as possible. "You don't have to try to manipulate me into not telling them."

Pitch's words trailed off and his mouth hung open for a moment before he took a breath to start denying that was what he was doing, Jack could tell.

"I'm not going to say anything," he said, calmly and quiet and hoping Pitch could hear the truth of his words. Because even when he knew why Pitch was saying what he was, it didn't stop his anxieties from listening and eating up the words.

"That-" Pitch started, but Jack cut him off again.

"I'm serious. It's none of their business and it's not important." It wasn't. Sure, this was something he _should_ tell them, something they would be disappointed in him for if he didn't. But what harm could one tiny Nightmare do? Not much. And on the off chance Pitch was telling the truth — that this had happened before and the Guardian with him had summoned Sandy to deal with it — Jack wouldn't be the one to tattle.

Pitch drew back, watching him suspiciously, before nodding once, sharply. "Good," he said, and turned away from Jack.

That was fine with Jack; it gave him a moment to work the shivers out of his body from how Pitch's words had hit close to home. And when Pitch started to walk away, to finish working through the town, Jack didn't follow, instead taking the time to breathe.

He needed to remember that, however easily they fell into something resembling a friendly aloofness, Pitch was still a bad guy who would take every chance he had to manipulate Jack into doing what he wanted. He couldn't let his guard down, not like he had been. It was foolish, and he hated living up to other spirits' assumptions about him.

But… for a moment he remembered the look in Pitch's eyes the first time Jack had reached out toward the foal. He truly believed that the Guardians wouldn't purposefully kill something that wasn't threatening them, but… That had almost been fear in Pitch's eyes.

Jack closed his eyes for a long moment, trying to let go of the thoughts and just enjoy the moment, the cool breeze blowing across his skin, the scent of snow in the air, and the knowledge that it was almost cold enough to start bringing snow days.

When he opened his eyes, he turned to find Pitch, and then purposefully walked in the opposite direction, trailing frost over the front steps of the houses he passed. Maybe he shouldn't've been alone at the moment, but he didn't want to be anywhere near Pitch, not when he was in the mood to lash out at Jack.

If he kept that attitude it was going to be a long night. Jack worried absently at his hoodie strings while he walked. He hoped Pitch believed him about not telling the Guardians, believed him and calmed down, because Jack didn't want to spend the rest of the night fighting. They were almost getting along before. It would suck to go back to quietly — and not-so-quietly — hating each other, just because Pitch was freaked out. Having his tender places poked at wasn't fun.

With that in mind, he avoided Pitch as much as he could for the rest of the night. Pitch seemed glad of the fact, and was almost civil by the time it was dawn. As he descended back to his lair and the tiny Nightmare raced ahead of him into the darkness, Jack hoped he wasn't doing the wrong thing.


	17. In Which Debts Are Refused

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sneaks in through the back door* ummmm, hi?

The tiny Nightmare didn't make an appearance every night, but sometimes Jack could see it in the distance as Pitch worked, making it easier for Pitch to bring fear to children. Watching it gave him an odd feeling in his stomach, an almost queasy sort of rolling, like he was nearing the top of a rollercoaster. Only, with this rollercoaster, he didn't know what the path down looked like.

Jack hadn't seen Sandy since the discussion about the cruelty of Pitch's manacles. If he had, then he would've been bugging Sandy all the time to get updates on how the replacements were coming along. But it was difficult to find a spirit who had the whole world to cover, one who didn't have a set route or an easy-to-find home.

He almost thought that Sandy had forgotten that he'd agreed to find an alternative; Jack hadn't thought it would take that long to come up with one. So while he was moving through the steps to grant himself entrance to Pitch's lair, he made a mental promise that he would find Sandy the next night he had free and see how things were coming along. North had been saying lately that he needed to visit them all more, and probably that would count.

As soon as he fell down to land in a trampled circle of dust-free floor in the small room that he'd started to think of as Pitch's entryway, he was slammed up against the nearest wall, his feet dangling above the floor. His staff clattered from his fingers, and all Jack could do was scrabble at the arms and the hands fisted into his hoodie, pinning him to the wall.

"Was this your doing?" Pitch hissed, bringing Jack forward and slamming him back again.

"Let go of me!" Jack raked his fingernails down Pitch's arms, but there was too much cloth in the way for him to cause any damage.

Pitch shook him, hard enough that his head smacked back against the wall, leaving an aching pain and briefly doubled vision on the rebound. Jack's heart was going rabbit fast, and if he could just get free, get to his staff- The shadows behind Pitch were looming across the ceiling, creeping ever higher the longer he held Jack against the wall.

"Was. This. You," Pitch hissed again.

"Was _what_ me?" Jack gasped as he tried to lash out with his feet and get Pitch in the balls, but Pitch easily evaded him and slammed him against the wall again, making what was sure to be a giant egg on the back of his head throb as his head cracked against the wall again.

" _This_." Pitch grabbed him by the throat long enough to gesture angrily to the left side of his chest, where a gaudy moon in shifting dreamsand was pinned. Then he was back to holding Jack up with both hands by the front of his hoodie, while Jack coughed and choked.

That was when it hit Jack that the reason Pitch could hold him up like that was the lack of cuffs around his wrists. He stopped struggling, curling his hands loosely around Pitch's wrists instead, and grinned. Pitch blinked at him, confusion briefly taking over his face before it twisted back into anger.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Is it better than the cuffs?"

"Is it-" Pitch let go and stepped back so suddenly that Jack sprawled across the floor. His fingers bumped against his staff, so he grabbed it and used it to lever himself up, holding it loosely in his hand and keeping a wary eye on Pitch.

"I knew Sandy would come through with something," Jack said, his grin widening. "I knew-"

"I don't need your _help_ ," Pitch said. Even though his heart had been slowing down, it started to ratchet up to human-level speed again as he noticed something out of the corner of his eye, and twisted around to see the shadows behind him climbing up the wall. The light in the room had coalesced into a flickering line across the top of the wall behind him.

"I- What?" Jack asked. He swallowed, the grin fading. Pitch looked murderous for the first time in a long while. "I thought you'd be happy."

"Happy?" Pitch asked. " _Happy_? I don't need you. I don't need your help or your pity or your-"

"I was trying to do something _nice_ for you," Jack said, taking a step forward as Pitch faltered back. "For Manny's sake, Pitch, I was just trying to do the right thing." He scowled as the confusion passed over Pitch's face again, there and gone in a split second. "It wasn't fair that-" it was his turn to falter as Pitch seemed, if anything, angrier than he had been before.

"I will not be indebted to you," Pitch said. "I didn't ask for this. I-"

"I don't want anything from you," Jack said, almost snarled. Try to do a nice thing, and this was what he got? It wasn't right that Pitch had been wearing cuffs that were slowly burning raw spots on his wrists, so he fixed it because- because he didn't want to see that happening to Pitch. It was supposed to be something- something…

Something you would do for a friend stuck in a bad place.

Jack swallowed and thinned his lip. They weren't friends. They couldn't be friends, and they wouldn't be friends. It was fucked up that Jack had even thought of thinking that. This was Pitch Black, and Pitch Black was a bad guy, and he didn't have friends.

But maybe… maybe that didn't mean he didn't _need_ them.

Jack realized he was chewing on his lip while Pitch glared daggers at him. After a moment of silence, Jack finally said, "You don't owe me anything. It wasn't about you," he lied. "It was about doing the right thing. So suck it up."

" _Suck it up_?" Pitch asked, his eyes flashing. The light in the room had dimmed a lot, the shadows behind him darkening and reaching the ceiling. Jack shivered but he didn't back down.

"Yeah, suck it up." Then, after a moment of almost stunned silence from Pitch, he added, quietly, "It… it is better, right?"

It took a long moment of stunned silence, but Pitch eventually inclined his head the slightest bit, which Jack was going to take for a yes. The grin took over his face again, and he nodded to the door.

"Ready to go?"

As the nights had grown longer and colder, Jack had found himself helping Pitch more often than not, sending the wind whistling through trees or moaning down chimneys, creating ice sculptures to reflect the light just right, dropping the temperature in spots around the room because kids thought that was how you found ghosts. He hadn't imagined Pitch's job could've been so fun.

As he traipsed around after Pitch, part of him wondered if all the Guardians needed to was to see how much fun this was, and how kids weren't actually hurt by it. But the rest of him remembered dreamsand chains that hadn't been gone for long enough and the look on Pitch's face when Jack had gone to touch the Nightmare, and he kept silent. Besides, it was kind of fun to have something with another person that was all his again. Without the unwavering belief of Jamie when he was little, there hadn't been anything that was just Jack's in a long time. Not even Jamie's kids…

"Jack," Pitch's voice snapped Jack out of his mental spiral downward, and he looked up to see Pitch watching him impatiently. He had grown less cranky as they traveled around their first stop for the night, but he still wasn't pleased with Jack. "If you would be so kind as to make it _today_?"

"Yeah, sorry," Jack said, shaking his head a little and wincing at the stab of pain that shot through it. It took a while for injuries to heal, on the rare occasions when he did get injured. He was going to have a headache for a while yet. He finished forming some clear ice into a ball that sent the light of the setting sun refracting into a hundred different points, cutting through shadows in a way that made it look as though they were skittering around the darkened room. At dusk and dawn, it took Jack less effort to create shadows with light than it did for Pitch to control his living shadows, so that was what they usually defaulted back to.

Pitch made a noise of acknowledgment and kept on with his own work. He was looking somewhat better, less haggard and less like he was going to keel over at any moment. Jack still wouldn't call him anywhere near healthy-looking, but he supposed it was a start.

"You're distracted tonight," Pitch said from right next him, making Jack jump in surprise, and then grit his teeth at the pounding in his head. "Not worried I'm going to up and run, are we?"

Jack shrugged. "Where would you go?"

"Where indeed," Pitch said under his breath, looking off into the distance, like he had a place in mind and could see it if he just looked hard enough.

Jack yawned and didn't respond. He didn't need to sleep often, but being out with Pitch nearly every night was taking its toll on him. He was starting to get tired, which wasn't too surprising. But he had one more night to get through, and the following day, before he could rest.

In the next town, he found a nice roof to sit on, and watched Pitch from up there as he went around. He slowly tipped backward, laying against the peak of the roof and leaning his head to the side so it ached the least. He frosted the area of the roof he was on, the cold calming the throbbing in his head. He only meant to close his eyes for a moment.


	18. In Which Kindness Fails

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imma just leaves this here and slink out the back. Cool? Cool.
> 
> Unbeta'd, as always.

Jack woke up with a start and a flail, and tumbled down the roof until he managed to hook the crook of his staff over the peak. Shit. Shit! He hadn't meant to fall asleep. The stars had moved enough that it meant he had been asleep for a while. His head was still muzzy with it, but he knew that falling asleep had been a bad, bad plan and that Pitch was probably Manny knew where by now.

He floated back up to the rooftop and almost fell off again when he saw Pitch.

Pitch was sitting on the same rooftop, leaning back against the chimney, knees bent and face tilted up to the stars. Jack swallowed, his throat clicking, before he settled down in front of Pitch, legs crossed.

"Why didn't you leave?" fell out of his mouth before he could stop it. There was a difference between thinking that Pitch had nowhere to go with his powers that weak and thinking he wouldn't at least try to run. Try to find a way to get around Sandy's dreamsand power dampener. Try to disappear until he was strong enough again to fight them.

Pitch didn't answer for a long moment, still staring at the stars, the starlight reflecting off his eyes, hiding the gold and making them shine. Then he tipped his head down to look at Jack and said, in a mocking tone, "Where would I go?"

Jack shrugged. "Anywhere," he said. "Maybe not to your lair, but there are shadows everywhere and you could-" Pitch was looking faintly amused, and Jack realized what he was saying. Encouraging. "Uh. I mean. Yeah, like I said." He paused again, a familiar emotion warming him. He almost didn't say anything but… Maybe it would do Pitch good to hear it. "I'm glad you didn't."

Pitch snorted, anger stealing over his face before disappearing as quickly as it had come. "Don't want to get in trouble with your little Guardian friends?"

Jack shook his head. If Pitch got away, they would blame him, for sure, but they wouldn't- Well, they probably wouldn't kick him out or anything. It would just be more evidence that Jack was only good for fun and games, not for responsibilities. "Because this is fun. Usually."

Pitch was looking away, even before Jack finished talking. "Glad you find this all entertaining," he said, but it sounded less sarcastic than usual.

"I do," Jack said, forcing as much seriousness into his voice as he could. He must've done good because Pitch's eyes widened, before he hastily look upward, returning to watching the stars. Jack was still feeling fuzzy from sleep, and he was sure that was why the next words that dropped out of his mouth managed to escape his brain-to-mouth filter. "How do the Guardians treat you?"

"Like exactly what I am," Pitch murmured. "A necessary evil."

He hadn't planned on saying that. Jack could see that in the way his mouth pinched and his eyes flicked to Jack for the briefest moment before fixing on the sky again. He had tensed, and the shadows that clung to him were pulling in tighter, as if to shield him from Jack's reaction. His hands were curled into claws against the rood, and Jack was struck by the sudden desire to take them and uncurl them, to soothe the hurt in them.

North's words about how manipulative Pitch was passed through Jack's head, but he discarded them as quickly as they came. Pitch had tried to manipulate him before. This wasn't the same. He'd never looked _uncomfortable_ when he was trying to manipulate Jack. He never looked like he would rather be anywhere but right there.

" _What_?" Pitch finally snapped, lowering his gaze to meet Jack's eyes with a sneer and a blazing anger. "Do you regr-"

"I don't think you're evil," Jack said quietly. Pitch's teeth clicked together as he stopped in the middle of a word, before he started to chuckle mirthlessly.

"Then more the fool are you," he said.

But Jack shook his head, leaning forward and studying Pitch's face. "No, I don't think so," Jack said. "I think..."

When he paused to collect his thoughts — because Pitch wasn't _good_ by a long shot, but Jack couldn't think of him as evil anymore — Pitch smirked and said, "Do tell, what do you think? What does the mighty _Jack Frost_ think about-"

"I think you're an asshole," Jack said over him, not letting him finish. "But I don't think you're evil. I don't-"

"Did you miss the part where I would kill the Guardians and bring about a second Dark Age?" Pitch snapped. "I was pretty sure you were there for that, but perhaps-"

"I don't think you would do it," Jack said, his belief in that firming even more when it made Pitch flinch back from him. "I think you would've gotten bored, and I think you knew it. I think you just wanted to-"

"Don't," Pitch said. "Don't you dare finish that thought. You might not think I'm evil, but that won't stop me from killing you were you sit."

Jack stopped and said, instead, "I don't think you'd do that either." He leaned back on his hands, smiling a little. Maybe he was striking too close to the truth with his words; he could make the effort to be kind instead of thoughtless. But he knew it was true. He knew that the Pitch he had come to know might try to kill the Guardians, might even temporarily succeed, but he didn't want another Dark Ages to come. Because-

"I was _powerful_ during the Dark Ages," Pitch snarled. "I had all the power I could want and more. People quivered before me, mortal and spirit alike, and I. Was. Their. _King_. I was-"

"You were lonely," Jack blurted, flinching even as he said the words. So much for being kind. "You were lonely and I don't think you want that again. I don't think you'd spend so much time-" Jack grimaced "-humoring me and humoring the Guardians if you did."

Pitch stared at him, rage and loathing and something close to fear twisting their way across his face before a calm mask fell over him. "Is that so."

Jack shrugged and fought the urge to scoot back until he was out of easy grabbing range. "Yeah," he said, shrugging again and meeting Pitch's eyes with what he hoped looked like confidence and not terror that he was wrong and this was going to be the end of him.

Part of him wondered if the Guardians would miss him if Pitch did kill him, but he banished the thought with a mental shake and refused to drop his gaze.

In the end, Pitch was the first to look away, his entire body turning away from Jack, no longer relaxed like he had been when Jack first woke up. And Jack was feeling far more awake than he had been when he started the conversation; adrenaline did that to a person. It had burned the cotton out of his head, and this wasn't a conversation he wanted to continue while he was in his right mind.

So he reach blindly into his hoodie and pulled out a snow globe, shaking it up and dropping his gaze to watch the snowflakes swirl around the city in it. "Time to go?" he asked, without looking at Pitch. He told himself it was because he was giving Pitch privacy with whatever feelings were churning through him. But really, he just didn't want to look and see the hatred on Pitch's face, or the blankness that was possibly worse than the hatred.

"Time to go," Pitch said with finality, and plucked the snow globe out of Jack's hands, making Jack jerk and scramble to his feet. He hadn't noticed Pitch get that close to him. Pitch waited for a moment, eyeing Jack with suspicion, before throwing the snow globe ahead of them on the roof. Jack followed him through the opening, and spent the rest of the night uneasy and feeling wrong-footed every time he tried to talk to Pitch.

Pitch wouldn't talk back; it hadn't been like that for a while, Jack realized, and he didn't like it. They had reached a point where Pitch would at least tolerate his need for attention. Now he was being ignored half the time, and he didn't like it. It felt...

Each time he tried to bug Pitch and Pitch just ignored him felt uncomfortably similar to when a kid would run through him. It didn't take long for him to stop trying.

At the end of the night, when Jack was delivering him back underground, Jack said, "See you tomorrow?" The slightly needy uplift at the end of the sentence making him hate himself just a little.

"Tomorrow is North's night, I thought," Pitch said, grimacing. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then closed it, his eyes skittering away from Jack's.

"Oh," Jack said, trying to swallow his disappointment. When Pitch looked back at him, the confusion that sometimes passed fleetingly over his features was back. "Yeah, you're right. So."

"I'll see you next week," Pitch said, meeting Jack's eyes again. It wasn't a question. His voice was firm, without even the hint of a questioning lift at the end.

Still, Jack answered. "Yeah. Yeah, see you next week," before he turned and called the wind down to whisk him away.


	19. In Which Presents Are Given

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ummmmmmm oops? Happy Holidays? :D?

Jack liked to think that their relationship was slowly improving, even after the disaster that was that night. It was almost something he could consider a friendship. Especially if he made allowances for how grumpy and out of practice at being friends Pitch was.

December came with cold enough temperatures that snow followed in Jack's wake everywhere he went. He thought that Pitch was going to get frustrated with the snow, the way it seemed everyone Jack knew did. But he seemed to take it with the same lack of concern that he took everything else.

He let the tiny herd of Nightmares that had accumulated come with them sometimes, and they seemed to like frolicking in the snow like real horses. They were all still tiny, the biggest maybe the size of an overly large squirrel, and Jack couldn't help but wonder if they were tiny because of the restraining magic on Pitch, if they were tiny because they weren't getting enough fear, or if they were tiny just because that was how Nightmares were when they were young.

He'd never thought to ask Pitch how old the Nightmares that followed him during their battle had been, and it was too late now. And Jack was wary of bringing up anything about them, feeling superstitious that maybe talking about it out loud would bring the notice of the Guardians down on them and get the little things killed.

They were too cute to be killed.

And wasn't that a change of heart? When had he started believing Pitch that the Guardians weren't as perfect as he'd thought they were — people to look up to high on their pedestal and people whose attention he wanted to bask in whenever he could, good or bad. When had he decided they were just... people? Nothing special, any more than he was. Maybe they were more powerful than him, that was true, and maybe they were more important than him — also true — but they weren't special. Not the way he'd thought they were.

Was this Pitch's doing? Had he really manipulated Jack into thinking badly of his friends, even though he still liked them? Did it really count as thinking badly of them if it was more frustration that they couldn't see why they were wrong than anger that they weren't as pure as he'd thought?

Whatever. It was almost Christmas. For the past half century he'd actually gotten Christmas presents, and given presents in turn to the Guardians. The gifts he got were never anything too big -- fancy flossing kits and toothbrushes from Tooth, fancy cookies from both North and Bunny, and a set of good dreams from Sandy -- and nor were the gifts he gave them. And this year... This year he had an extra person to give a gift to. If he could figure out how to even bring up the subject and find out if Pitch actually wanted anything or if he was going to think that presents were stupid and foolish and-

Jack shook himself out of his thoughts with a full body shudder. Pitch glanced over at him, but didn't stop whatever frights he was scaring up. Jack hadn't thought he was paying attention to what Jack was doing at all, any more than Jack was really paying attention to what Pitch was doing.

That had started happening more and more often lately, too. He would glance at Pitch, only to see him already watching Jack, his expression carefully blank. It wasn't even unnerving, the way Jack thought it would have been when they first started this whole thing.

Jack slid down a short ice slide to where Pitch was standing, overly conscious of how they ended up standing with their shoulders almost-but-not-quite touching. He was silent for a bit, just watching as tiny Nightmares seeped into and out of windows, and shadows flickered and swirled. He sent a brief burst of the wind to rattle tree branches almost without thinking about it. Helping was almost second nature; he didn't think about it anymore and didn't think about how angry that Guardians would be if they saw him helping.

He definitely didn't think about what would happen if they found out and told him he couldn't be trusted as one of the people guarding Pitch. If they told him he couldn't be trusted at all.

"It's almost Christmas," he blurted, needing to get out of his head more than he needed to figure out a subtle way to bring it up.

Pitch made a noise somewhere between an acknowledgment that he was listening and a scoff. "And I suppose you have plans with the Guardians and snow days to make that mean I won't be-" his voice hardened abruptly when he continued "- _let out_ for a few days?"

"What?" Jack asked, baffled. He wouldn't do that. He hadn't even thought about doing that. Sure the Guardian's annual winter party would edge into nighttime, but it wouldn't be hard for him to slip out before it got dark.

Pitch was silently looking at him, his mouth a hard line and his eyes wary, so Jack added out loud, "I wouldn't do that. I've already taken over for North for the season, why would I-" He stopped and shook his head, reminding himself that if there was one thing he had learned about Pitch over the course of this, it was that he didn't trust any of the Guardians in the slightest, and that included Jack. "I wouldn't do that," he said again, firmly.

"Then why bring it up?" Pitch asked, still standing stiffly at Jack's side instead of relaxed and almost loose-limbed like had been the usual lately. "What game are you playing at?"

"No game," Jack said, trying hard not to scowl -- and failing, judging by the smirk Pitch tossed at him as he started to relax by degrees.

Pitch's voice was soft, almost persuading as he said, "I can still read your fear, Jack. Just-"

"If you can read my fear still, why would you even think I was coming here to tell you I was going to split for a while?" Jack asked, interrupting before Pitch could get going. A bit of anger crested through him, briefly washing away his nervousness at bringing up any holiday around Pitch.

"I was _going_ to ask what you do for non-Halloween holidays," Jack said a thread of nervousness tendrilling its way through the anger, "and what you wanted to do for the winter ones."

"Ah," Pitch said, looking briefly surprised. "I've been on that fool's naughty list since he came up with the idea. "Why would you think I would celebrate winter anything when he's the one in charge?"

Jack shrugged. "I was on the Naughty List for, I don't know, twenty-eight? decades straight? I still-" He broke off as Pitch's face clouded with anger before smoothing out again into his usual impassive mask. "Uh. Yeah. I still celebrated holidays, in my own way." Jack laughed a little, thinking about how pathetic those years were, and how much they had changed. "I'd never gotten a Christmas present until the year they let me be a Guardian."

Pitch nodded a little, and Jack was struck by a sudden, horrifying realization. "Wait. You've _always_ been on the Naughty List?"

Pitch looked at him sideways, frowning, before taking a step away and almost scowling at the house in front of them. "Of course. I'm the embodiment of everyone's worst nightmares combined. I am the darkness in the night, I am-"

"Oh my god," Jack said, something uncomfortable churning in him. "You've never gotten a Christmas present _ever_ , have you?"

Pitch actually scowled this time, rounding on Jack. "What use would I have for presents? What could anyone possibly give me that I couldn't just take for myself?"

"That's not the point of presents, jeez," Jack said. He needed to get Pitch something, then. It wasn't fair that he'd never gotten a Christmas present, and- "What about other presents?"

"What?" Pitch asked, his brow crinkling briefly.

"Other presents! Have you ever gotten a present at all?" Jack threw his arms out, his staff almost catching Pitch in the side. "I mean, has anyone ever got you something just because? Or-"

Pitch looked up to the stars, before looking back to Jack and grimacing, interrupting his tirade with, "Once. Back when- It doesn't matter now." He shook his head. "Of course I've gotten _presents_ before, Jack. Do you think I've spent the millenia since I came into existence alone?"

"Well. Kinda." Jack shrugged, realizing after he said it how rude that was. "I mean, you don't seem like the sort of guy who makes friends easy. I mean you're kinda prickly about- I mean. I'm just going to stop digging this hole now."

Pitch looked almost amused at that. "By all means, continue with your insults. I'll just stand here, shall I, while you think of some better ones."

"That's not what I was doing and you know it," Jack said. Pitch inclined his head the slightest bit at that, the tiniest hint of a smile on his face, and Jack was going to take it as a victory.

He couldn't stop thinking about it, though. That nobody had thought that maybe Pitch would like a gift in... In how long? He'd said it was a long time ago, but how long? Was he talking centuries or was he talking millenia? Jack needed to know so he would know how bad he was supposed to feel.

It was too bad he couldn't do anything really great for Pitch. Even though they'd spent every week together for almost a year, he didn't know that much about him. He did know one thing that might, well. Not cheer him up, because he wasn't really as angry anymore as he used to be, but maybe bring that tiny smile back.

It took a lot of careful maneuvering to sneak into the kitchens at North's place. He ended up hiding in the cupboard under one of the sinks. From there, it wasn't hard to grab an elf and convince it to steal him some undecorated winter-themed cookies and piping bags of icing.

He made a mess of the first few, but then they were coming out pretty good if he did say so himself. Still, he grabbed another elf and had it get him some already decorated ones, before sneaking out with his bounty.

He hid them and waited for the night before Christmas Eve, when North would be working furiously in the workshop, and not venturing out into the world at all, no matter what. Then he went to pick up Pitch.

"Hey Pitch!" he yelled and jumped, almost losing the bag in his hand, when hands landed on his shoulder.

"What do you have there, Jack?" Pitch asked, his breath ghosting along Jack's ear, making him shiver.

He waited a moment too long in stepping out from under Pitch's grasp for any sort of plausible deniability over whether he was _enjoying_ Pitch having his hands on him or not. He could see Pitch putting together his loneliness when he turned around, and thrust the bag toward him.

"Merry Christmas!" he said, with false brightness in his voice. His shoulders were cooling swiftly from the warmth of Pitch's hands. "I brought you a present."

"A-" Pitch started, and Jack knew — he _knew_ — Pitch was about to start a fight, so he interrupted before it could get started.

"Just take it," he said. "I know you're going to argue, and that's stupid, because it's a present and everyone deserves to get presents sometimes."

"Oh, of course. This is-" Pitch tried, staring at the bag, but Jack continued on over him.

"And no, I don't feel sorry for you. You're a massive dick and I'm not surprised that people don't give you presents because, well. Because you're a dick and sometimes you make really, really bad decisions. But-" He swallowed, almost chickening out of what he was going to say next. But he pushed forward, because- Because he wished someone had said this to him back when he wasn't friends with the Guardians. "But you haven't been a dick to me — not really — for a while and, I don't know. We're almost sort of friends. So here." He thrust the bag forward again. "Take it."

When he finished, Pitch was staring at him. He forced himself to meet Pitch's eyes, not flinching back from the way he looked stripped bare. From the way he looked almost like Jack had punched him.

So Jack shook the bag a little, making it rustle, and hoped that Pitch would just take it and not keeping trying to start a fight just so he didn't have to feel something that wasn't anger.

Finally, Pitch looked away and took the bag, slowly, from Jack's grasp. He looked inside, and when he looked up, that tiny almost-smile was back on his face.

"Does North know who you're giving these to?"

Jack snorted, and shook his head. "He doesn't even know I have them. I figured you'd like them better if you knew I'd thrown off his whole cookie system by stealing an entire batch right before Christmas."

Pitch took out one, looking at the sloppy decorations. Jack didn't care that they weren't as nice as the ones the yetis had done, because they were made with, if not love, _like_. "I decorated that one! The nice ones are the ones the yeti did, but I made the elves get me some undecorated ones so I could-"

He broke off his rambling when he noticed the look in Pitch's eye. It was some mix of awed and stunned and confused and grateful.

"Thank you," Pitch said, his voice serious and solemn.

"Uh," Jack said, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "I mean, it wasn't like- It's not anything special. It's just- They're just stolen cookies."

"Well," Pitch said and paused, a brief, uncertain look passing over his face, before his face fell back into its usual unfeeling mask. "I guess you'll just have to do better next year, then."

The pause after he said that was tense and anxious before Jack realized he was waiting for Jack to say something. So Jack laughed a little, and grinned, and said, "Yeah well, next year you owe me a present too."

Pitch nodded, like it was a sacred deal he was making. It made Jack swallow, the realization that they both just agreed that they'd still be doing this in a year. That neither of them had any intention of making the other leave.

He felt something that had been tight and wound up uncoil in him. It was something, he realized, that had always been waiting for Pitch to get sick of him and say he'd rather Bunny be taking him around than Jack. Anyone but Jack. For a brief, perfect instance, Jack felt almost weightless with the knowledge that, for the moment at least, Pitch had no intentions of doing that.

Of course, the real world had to crash back down on him, and he realized that just because Pitch didn't plan on doing that now didn't mean he'd come to regret his decision in half a year or three months or a few weeks. The loosened coil tightened again, this time with Jack unfortunately aware of it. He grimaced, and glanced quickly to Pitch to make sure he wasn't looking, before pressing his hand over his chest, where the tightness sat.

When Pitch turned back to him from where he had been sending the cookies off with the shadows — hopefully for safekeeping — Jack hastily dropped his hand and pasted a smile on his face. Pitch watched him and Jack was suddenly afraid he was seeing right through him, suddenly afraid that Pitch knew what he was feeling.

He forced the smile to stay on his face even as Pitch studied him and forced down the fear of Pitch realizing how afraid Jack was that this friendship was going to dissolve. There was disbelief in Pitch's eyes, and Jack felt slightly sick before of course he knew. He could read fear, _of course he knew_.

Pitch finally broke his gaze away from Jack's, and Jack slumped a little in relief. At least he wasn't going to say anything about it.

"If you're done?" Pitch asked, his tone bland and unfeeling. At the moment, Jack was glad of that, too.

"Let's go," he said, and lead the way off into the glow of the portal the snow globe opened, stepping through into the clear dark of the night. He could feel Pitch at his back and forced down a smile before realizing he was being foolish and letting it break over his face. Pitch was being uncharacteristically kind, and he wasn't going to question it.

Instead, he turned to Pitch, the grin still on his face, and gestured to the town with his staff. "Ready?"

Pitch met his gaze and nodded, the tiny almost-smile reappearing on his face. "As ever," he said, and for the first time, it didn't have the bite of anger and frustration to it that Jack was used to. It felt good to know that was because of him. It felt real good.


	20. In Which The Story Starts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-

Jack was lulled into a false sense of security between Christmas and Valentine's day. Something had shifted, making his near-nightly visits with Pitch something that was almost easy. Sure, Pitch was a grump, but he stopped being purposefully cruel, and seemed almost _glad_ when he saw Jack.

They lingered more, in the final city of the night. It wasn't that they had much to say to each other, not the way Tooth and North could fill a hall with all their words whenever Jack visited. It was a comfortable silence, something Jack hadn't known could exist.

Before, silence had always meant being _alone_. It meant nothing but his own voice and the crackle of winter trees at night, of begging the Man in the Moon to tell him why. It meant being on the outside of the Guardians' clique, of being not quite serious enough and not quite calm enough and not quite _right_ enough.

Now it just meant Pitch was concentrating, or Jack was busy toying with the weather to create winter wonderlands, or they were both sitting on a roof or Jack was up a tree with Pitch leaning against the trunk below or they were just wandering around the town together, watching the stars in companionable silence.

Jack hadn't known silence could actually be companionable before.

Of course, it couldn't last. Jack should've known something was wrong when he told Pitch he'd be taking over for Bunny until after Easter, and Pitch barely acknowledged him, looking for all the world like he wasn't listening at all.

"I said," Jack said, trying again, "that I'm taking over for Bunny until Easter."

"Yes, Jack, I heard you," Pitch snapped, barely flicking his gaze Jack's way. "What do you want me to do? Grovel at your feet in thanks for, what? For so selflessly allowing me an extra day of pseudo-freedom instead of leaving me to rot?

Jack blinked. "Um," he said, taking a step back and blinking again. "I- What?"

Pitch snorted and strode away from Jack to the town center. It took Jack a few moments to catch up, but one look at Pitch's face, twisted in anger, had him falling a few steps behind, giving Pitch space. He didn't know what he'd done; they'd parted on just fine terms last week and Jack hadn't thought he'd been too annoying that evening. He hadn't had the time to be annoying yet. He'd thought Pitch would be happy that it'd be him taking over for Bunny, and not one of the others.

Showed what Jack knew.

He forced himself to hurry his steps and catch up to Pitch. He didn't know how he'd fucked this up but he did know how he could fix it. "I could... ask one of the others to-" he started, only to stop short when Pitch made a scornful sound.

"Not everything is about you," he said, too focused on the rough, angry shadows he was controlling to look at Jack.

"Okay," Jack said, and stepped back and back through someone's yard until he hit the side of a house, leaving Pitch to go on with his work. Once Pitch worked his way out of sight, Jack slid down the side of the house to sit on the ground. It was too warm for the earth to be hard and unyielding, but too cool for the soil to have actually warmed up. He dug his fingers into the dirt, letting little spirals of frost escape from their tips until the ground around him was hard as a rock.

"Well?" Pitch said with a sneer an indeterminate amount of time later. "Are you planning on sulking all night or are you going to be useful and take us to wherever you thought would be _fun_ to go to tonight?"

Jack hauled himself to his feet with his staff, scowling but not saying anything. He wasn't sulking, but it was tempting to just hand Pitch all the snow globes and tell him to just go. Tempting, but Jack didn't really want him to leave, not without knowing if Pitch would rather someone else take over for Jack's nights.

He threw a snow globe at random and followed Pitch out into a night where the city lights bounced off of heavy clouds above. They were up north, where snow wasn't common during the spring but wasn't a complete surprise, either.

In fact, the smell of snow was on the wind, crisp and metallic and oh so soothing. Jack could feel his spirits lifting as he followed Pitch to the residential neighborhood that had the strongest tug of children being there.

It was going to be a heavy storm, Jack could tell. One where the wind howled and the snow blotted out vision until even he could barely see ahead of himself. And it would all melt in a few days, in time for Easter, which Bunny would be glad of. Or, well, which meant Bunny couldn't blame him for ruining Easter somewhere else.

He holed himself up on a rooftop, against a dormant air conditioning unit, while Pitch did his thing up and down the block. He was looking so much better now than he had been when Jack first started being one of the people to guard him. He didn't look so much like a corpse anymore — well, not any more so than usual. His face was less sunken and his hands, as they moved through the air, directing shadows, looked less skeletal.

The snow started to fall right as Jack got comfortable, fat, heavy flakes floating down slowly at first to land around him, then speeding up faster and faster. It wasn't bad until the wind started, making the snow dance and grow from storm to squall. Jack turned his face up to the sky and closed his eyes, letting the flakes drop on his face until he felt half-covered. When he opened his eyes, it was to a world of white.

He shook his head to get some of the snow off, a smile growing on his face. It took a moment for him to notice the dark shape on the ground below him, but when he did, the smile faded.

"Throwing a tantrum, Jack?" Pitch called up from the ground where he stood. Jack frowned, sliding down the roof and landing in front of Pitch with a swirl of snowflakes.

"What?" he asked, looking from Pitch to the sky and back again.

"Don't play coy," Pitch said through his teeth. Jack wanted to take a step back, but refused to let himself. Pitch was swiftly crossing the line from being a jerk to being an asshole. "Will you stop the snow so I can work?" When Jack didn't say anything, dumbfounded, Pitch narrowed his eyes to slits and said, "Or is your little tantrum going to last until someone soothes your ego and pretends you _matter_? I don't have time for this after last night."

"What is wrong with you?" Jack snapped, anger rising to cover the hurt in a thick layer of hatred.

"Don't pretend you don't know," Pitch hissed at him. "Stop the storm, Jack, before I have to do something you won't like."

"I don't control all the weather, asshole," Jack said, even though if he really tried, he could probably redirect this storm away from them. Or just move on from this city.

"The great Jack Frost can't control a little storm," Pitch said, disdain dripping from his words. "It's a wonder why the other Guardians bother to keep you around."

Jack flinched, physically recoiling while his heart wrenched. When he looked back up at Pitch, he wasn't the same Pitch that had spent the last week quietly -- if a little meanly -- teasing him about creating an ice slide from the top of a tree only to fall off halfway down and crash his way through the branches to the ground. This was someone else, someone Jack hadn't seen since-

Well, since they locked Pitch away.

"At least the Guardians put up with me," he snapped. "And I don't have to worry about them locking me up and throwing away the key the second someone says anything bad about me."

Pitch didn't flinch, but the look in his eyes had Jack wondering if maybe he hadn't scored a hit that was a little too deep. "Is that a threat?" Pitch asked, his voice quiet like the eye of a storm. "You think if you can tell them that, oh yes, they were right and Pitch really does need to be locked up for good, they'll want to keep you around longer? They'll put up with you for more time before leaving you for their next shiny toy?"

The wind whipped the snow around them, the blue of the storm reflected from the night sky circling them. Jack had to force himself to breathe through the hurt and remind himself that just because Pitch was saying some of his deepest fears out loud didn't make them _true_.

"It wasn't a threat, you asshole," Jack said, just as quiet and just as fierce. He almost bit the words off there, but couldn't stop himself from adding, "It was a fact."

Frost was sparking from his staff, pulsing with his anger. He wasn't sure how they'd got there, shouting at each other in the middle of a storm, but he wanted everything to go back to the way things were the week before. He wanted them to be friends. If they ever even were.

He could barely see the glint of Pitch's eyes through the snow, barely see the cruel twist of his lips as he spat out, "We were never _friends_. A captive can't be friends with his jailer."

Jack felt like he was going to throw up. "I-" he started, and stopped, swallowing the desperate words down. The heat of his anger had stopped warming him to the fight and started burning with cold flames. He didn't understand how they'd gone from where they were to this. "I wish I knew what was going on inside your head," he snapped instead. "If anything."

The soft blue of the storm around them brightened suddenly, becoming almost blinding, as a tinkling voice said, "Your wishes will be granted," with a little giggle at the end.

"What was that?" Jack asked into the stunned silence.

Pitch was, if anything, paler than usual as he said, "The Blue Fairy, you imbecile. What have you done?" He looked panicked, almost, which wasn't better than the anger that had been distorting his face before.

"What-" Jack started, before doubling over with a gasp as something felt like it was ripped straight from him. He caught a glimpse of Pitch doing the same across from him, a scream that sounded almost like a plea ripping out of his throat. For the briefest of moments, Jack wanted to comfort him somehow, before he was too busy screaming himself.

He couldn't feel the frost anymore.


	21. In  Which Fear Is Everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's get this party started!

Jack didn't know how long he spent, doubled over and panicking over the sudden emptiness. It felt like forever, like an eternity of horror passing through him. If he thought dying hurt, that people passing through him hurt, that was _nothing_.

There was something empty inside of him. Something was missing, something important, something he didn't know how to get back. He swiped an arm across his mouth, expecting the cool dryness of his hoodie to somehow take away the sick taste of acid burning on his tongue. Instead, all he felt was the dampness of melting frost.

He thought there couldn't be anything worse than the empty feeling, until something squirming and cold started filling the space. With it, came a new fear, fear that the greasy squirming would take over and he would never get his powers back.

As the sensation and the fear grew, he wanted to start screaming again. Instead, he pointed his staff at the nearest tree, trying to conjure a blast of ice to cover it. If his powers were on the fritz ( _gone_ , something whispered in the back of his mind, _gone gone gone_ ), his staff could concentrate them. His powers had to still be there, he just couldn't feel them for some reason. He just-

Instead of frost covering the trunk of the tree and growing to a heavy coating of ice, shadows crept and crawled upward, shrouding the trunk in a darkness so complete it was like a hole in the world.

"Wha-" he started, staring down at his staff, at his hoodie, which was damp and free of even the smallest hint of frost.

The terror of losing his powers for good, of them being _replaced_ , was growing as the sensation of the empty hole in his midsection filling stopped. For a brief moment, he was glad, until he realized that the feeling of emptiness was gone completely. The hole in him had been filled up with whatever the new sensation was. It wasn't a pleasant one.

North would know what to do. North would-

Jack was turning to Pitch — to tell him that he needed to go see North, that something was wrong, that something was _broken_ — when something good, something that was almost… almost a pleasant taste on the back of his tongue filled him. Along with it, though, came a nameless fear following swift on the heels of the terror of losing his powers. As Pitch straightened from where he, too, had been bent double, the fear coalesced into something very, very real, and very, very complicated. He stared at Pitch while he struggled to untangle the threads, to figure out why he was so afraid with a fear that didn't have anything to do with his powers being gone.

Pitch wasn't looking any better than Jack assumed he looked himself. His face was pale and eyes wild, darting from place to place before focusing on Jack with a look that was half panic and half rage.

"I-" Jack said, choking off before he even got started because the threads of fear crawling down his spine suddenly separated as the taste on the back of his tongue, in the back of his throat, split into a hundred different traces of flavor. He was _so afraid_ ; he couldn't read the fear of everyone around him and he was _so. Afraid_. He was afraid it wasn't going to come back, that Jack couldn't undo this, that it wasn't something he could force the world to give him.

Oh.

Oh no.

Jack realized with horror that he was _feeling Pitch's fear_. His fear that this wasn't reversible, that Jack had his power and could tell what he was afraid of, that Jack would realize what he had and use it against Pitch.

Over it all was an overwhelming terror that the other Guardians were going to blame this on him or he would lose his temper or they would just get sick of their responsibility and throw him back into his pit for another fifty, hundred, thousand years. And he was terrified by how sometimes he just wanted them to do it, get it over already.

"I wouldn't let them do that," Jack said automatically, his voice rasping and raw from the screaming.

"What?" Pitch asked, sounding distracted and nothing more. There was a small circle of frost spreading around him, its center at his feet.

"Lock you up again. I wouldn't let them do that." Picking through the fear of what was his and what was Pitch's was harder than he would've thought. It was easier to just focus on that one problem.

He didn't want to think about how he was using Pitch's fear as a distraction from his own. It made him feel dirty, somehow, like he was pointing out something that he was supposed to politely ignore.

Pitch blinked at him, and there was another burst of jumbled fears that Jack couldn't begin to piece out before everything became muted, like a murmur in the back of his mind instead of a shout. But that just made Jack's own fear more present, harder to shove away.

Storm clouds were gathering above as they stood there, staring at each other. Jack was breathing hard, and distantly, he knew he was hyperventilating because his powers were _gone_ and if he had Pitch's powers did Pitch have his? Did they just swap? What would Pitch do with the power to control the snow and wind?

It started to snow gently around them.

"What. Did. You. Do?" Pitch bit out, taking a step forward, into Jack's space.

Jack refused to fall back, straightening and forcing himself to slow his breathing, pushing everything he was afraid of to the back of his mind. This, he could do. Fighting with Pitch was as easy as breathing.

"I didn't do anything," he said after too long of a pause for it to be believable. "I just-"

"Did you know she was here?" Pitch asked, his hands shooting out and grabbing Jack by the front of his hoodie. The wind began to pick up around them, sending the snow swirling and blowing almost sideways. He pulled Jack closer, making Jack need to steady himself by grabbing onto Pitch's wrists.

" _Who_?" Jack snapped back. Shadows were gathering around them, softening the look of the snow, making indistinct patches where anything could be hiding.

"The Blue Fairy," Pitch hissed, giving Jack a shake. His fear was starting to escape whatever tenuous hold he had on it, and Jack could taste the way Pitch was afraid that this was it, this was the thing that would get him thrown back into a hole, and it wasn't even his fault.

"I don't-" Jack said, cutting himself off with a snap of teeth when Pitch shook him again. "Stop it," he snapped, wrenching himself free. Frost was gathering on Pitch's robes, fractal patterns climbing up the edges the way they had on Jack's hoodie.

Jack took a step back, to get himself out of easy grabbing range. For a moment, a bitter well of fear that Jack was just going to go and leave him lost with powers he could barely control. It didn't stop Jack from taking another step back, but something in his expression must have softened because Pitch sneered at him and all the fears were muted again.

"The Blue Fairy is a myth," Jack said, rubbing his hands together and looking up at the sky so Pitch couldn't see anything in his eyes. "She doesn't- She's just a bedtime story for people like us." He'd never admit how many times he'd hoped, prayed to Manny that if the Man in the Moon wouldn't answer his pleas, maybe something else would. Something kinder, and gentler, and if this was kind and gentle he really wanted to punch whoever came up with the words.

"Does this feel like a myth?" Pitch snapped, he crossed his arms over his chest for a moment before seeming to realize how defensive it made him look and dropping them.

"I- No," Jack had to admit. "How do we make her undo it?" He didn't even want to think what had happened, never mind say it out loud.

Pitch's silence was damning.

"There has to be a way to get her to undo this!" Jack ran his hands through his hair, his fingers forming rigid claws that clenched and pulled. When he realized what he was doing, he forced himself to uncramp his hands and stop pulling at it.

Pitch slumped a little. It was more terrifying than anything that had happened so far. "She never returns what she takes," he said, his face empty of everything but a harrowed sadness.

Jack paused, turning that over in his mind. That couldn't be true. He refused to believe it was true. It _couldn't_ be true because that would mean they were both stuck like this and he wouldn't be able to be a Guardian anymore and oh. He was starting to hyperventilate again.

Instead of letting himself spiral downward with that, he took a snow globe out of his pocket that he'd been saving to use for a truly glorious prank and threw it ahead of them.

"We need to go see North."


End file.
